You are Hitler, now take over Europe

Which allies? Great Britain and France had guaranteed to defend Poland against attack, but that wouldnt cover this situation. France and Russia were historic allies, so it's rather unlikely that they would support their dangerous neighbor Germany at Russia's expense. If they fight at all, it's more likely they would support Russia. But in the early 1930's, both Great Britain and France had their militaries set up almost entirely for defense.

^ France anyways did. Britain still could count on the raw offensive power of the Royal Navy.

hmm...given a choice, Britain would let Germany and the soviets slug it out no problem. Britain also doesn't care about Poland all that much so they wouldn't care if it got stuck in a war between the two fascists. Thing is, Poland has no reason to trust Germany and every reason to fear it so it's in Poland's best interest to keep the Nazis out. This is problematic for Poland as it sits right between Russia and Germany.

Now, Russia's valuable resources, like oil and farmland, lie to the south by the black sea. With Austria knocked out and Italy an ally, Germany can ship an army to attack Russia's back door, invading right into the oil fields and pushing into the farm land. Russia knows this so it has a fleet in the black sea to defend it against attacks. This fleet is smaller than Germany's naval forces but almost the entire German fleet is in the north. Thus, Germany has to either smuggle it's entire navy into the mediterranian or rely on the italians for naval support.

It's certainly a big gamble but the payoff is cutting off Russia's oil and thus their tanks while threatening their food supplies. Scorched earth tactics would kill the soviets if the Germans can keep their forces supplied via the black sea as the Nazis can just dig in and wait for Russia to starve. General Winter is also not be a factor as the Black Sea is along the same latitude as Italy.

Volgograd (Stalingrad) is roughly the same latitude as Venice ^note (48 degrees North for Volgograd, 45 for Venice.) but has a much much colder winter. Ya know there's this thing called topography affecting the weather. There are no mountains north of Volgograd all the way to the Arctic. Meaning any arctic weather systems that come south in Western Russia go all the way to the Black Sea with absolutely nothing impeding it. (A similar effect happens in the Great Plains of North America.)

Venice on the other hand has the mighty European Alps blocking northern cold away from it.

Winter in Russia is cold everywhere da. Do not think Comrade Winter will never be an issue.

edited 27th Oct '14 8:14:00 PM by MajorTom

Not true. Water helps mitigate temperature extremes, partially due to state changes taking energy to complete but also because of water's specific heat. We can see this in the british isles where it's as far north as Moscow but far warmer.

Odessa, a city on the Black sea, has a temperate climate and mild, if dry winters with average lows of -2.8 C or 27 F. Only a few degrees below freezing. This is a matter of public record.

Britain has the North Atlantic Drift, a warm water current coming from the southwest that keeps the place mild.

Even at averages of -2.7C that's still a cold winter of a place. The averages are 30 or more years in conglomerate. There's really no predicting if January will be -2.7C on the dot or if it will be -27C for a time.

All it takes is one day below -20C and an entire army's worth of oil has just gelled into uselessness.

You can not plan military strategy on statistical outliers. Yes, it might get obscenely cold but by the same virtue it might never get cold enough to be a factor. Any unusual weather would likely be short lived and it is only the prolonged cold of Russian winter that is truly deadly. If it's only for a month or so the Germans can burn some of the oil they're drilling for to keep warm. It also might be possible to buy supplies from Turkey of the Black Sea freezes up as Turkey was once the heart of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany during the First World War.

Has anyone said "do everything Hitler did except the holocaust I guess, setting the stage for the EU to be created" yet? I guess that wouldn't work if you require Hitler to take over Europe and not just Germany.

It's a lose-lose either way, because without the Holocaust he'd either have to move an insane amount of manpower to man the concetration camps overcrowded with undesirables or not persecute anyone and completely betray the principle of National-Facism and probably end up usurped.

Well, there are plenty of levels of oppression between "none" and "the holocaust" so there might still be a chance...

You could try kicking them out of the country. Ask around and see if any neighboring country wants them or dump them at the nearest border and threaten to shoot them if they come back.

That isn't really going to work when I just invade the next country anyway. I'm pretty usre stealing money from people is going to have to happen, but do you think there's a chance Hitler!you could just not really kill any minorities but focus on strengthening Germany's position internationally? It seems like most authoritarian countries are willing to keep their genocide and conquest separate.

Which is why I said this:

The Holocaust was, in a lot of ways, a "clean solution" for Hitler because the original method (i.e locking up all minorities and undesirables in ghettos or concetration camps) was proving to be grossly inefficient due the sheer overcrowding causing a lot of funds and manpower to be spent. But if not locking them up far away, what to do? Set them free? That goes against the entire principle of the thing. So they developed a cleaner solution, a final solution, so to speak.

Conspiracy explains all of this pretty handily (it can also be found on Youtube).

Just stealing and taking away the properties of minorities still lets them run free to "corrupt" Germany, and locking them up is a monumental waste of resources, hence the Holocaust. Deporting them was considered, but ultimately considered both too costful and ineffective.

And just "not oppressing minorities at all" wouldn't fly because Hitler's entire ascenscion was oppressing minorities and using them as scapegoats. He'd probably never have gotten as far as he did without racism and prejudice to prop him up. In case he started off as we know that but changed his mind once in power, he'd lose a staggering amount of his support and set up his own downfall through an internal crisis.

"I guess that wouldn't work if you require Hitler to take over Europe and not just Germany."

You just answered your own question. The OP specified taking over all of Europe.

I dunno, the Holocaust itself always seemed like a waste of manpower. Soldiers and scientist and whatnot who could have been contributing to the war effort were wasting time killing people. In no way is this helping win battles or protecting Germany. If you're gonna be all Hitler about it you could at least control your genocidal impulses and just keep them all in labor camps instead of tossing them directly to Treblinka or Mengele's hands.

And your Slaves initially hated the Soviets more than you. I see little reason for not handing each of them a rifle and using them as disposable soldiers to soften up the Red Army for your next attack. Certainly more useful than chucking them off to a death camp.

Those rifles are worth more than those slave-soldiers' lives. The Wehrmacht was always running short of weapons in the war. It's why they used a lot of captured weapons especially in the Eastern Front. (And occupation forces. A lot of rearguard Wehrmacht occupiers in France had French military gear such as the Chatellerault.)

edited 6th Nov '14 6:47:15 PM by MajorTom

Mind you, they were running short on gear when they did all those bodies working as slaves in the factories. Take them away and put them on the front line and they don't have shit.

Realistically, Germany could have produced more arms though; they did not properly mobilize their own industry for sustained war production, they did not optimize their existing designs for mass production (compare both the US and Russia with the M4 and T-34 and the choices made), and more importantly they never made more than a token effort at mobilizing the industry of occupied nations.

If Germany had been able to properly mobilize the industrial power of occupied Europe, particularly the Czech Skoda works and French industry, their ability to churn out tanks and guns would have been very similar to that of Russia. They would still have faced a manpower disadvantage but that would not be crippling to a force on offense the way a lack of AFVs was, and might have turned the tide in the great 1942/1943 summer offensives.

edited 24th Nov '14 2:38:45 PM by Night

They did not mobilize for full military production because their political power base would have imploded if they had.

Considering it did not implode when their country was literally in ruins even in 1945, I find that argument difficult to sustain.

And split into two spheres of influence to boot.

It was in mid-implosion at the time. The external threat was simply faster in taking it out than the internal collapse.

The NSDAP's regime was a populist dictatorship, first and foremost. It depended rather strongly on good old bread and circuses to keep its people under control, a lot more so than on secret police and similar tactics. That's why the german industry never went to a full war footing until it was much too late...keeping the regular economy going was too important for keeping order.

One that had the people in favor of their aggressive actions for quite a long time. The notion of "Hitler oppressed everything!" and other such tripe to separate Germany from the Nazis was very much a post-war thing. (Especially in the West to keep NATO aid in country to dissuade the Soviets.)

Not everyone was a Nazi in Nazi Germany, but by no means was the government unpopular for any significant part of the war. After all, a very very large contingent of the Volkssturm were volunteers even in 1945 when the militia was on its last.

Use the jews as disposable infantry/suicide bombers. Waste not, want not.

^ Didn't you read? The penal battalion approach wastes valuable weapons which were always in shortage for the regular Wehrmacht, let alone anything else.

It's why they used captured weapons whenever they could instead of blowing them up a la EOD or melting them down and recycling it.

edited 3rd Dec '14 5:22:39 AM by MajorTom