You are Hitler, now take over Europe

Yeah, the Wehrmacht was well supplied with manpower (at least until they got into meat-grinder battles against the soviets). What they were always short of (and what ended up being the deciding factor) was materiel.

Their supplies were limited to begin with, and they had neither the production capacity nor the raw materials to sustain a long war (which was a large part of the reason why their strategic doctrine focused on rapid advances and what would today be called decapitation strikes...the idea was to knock out an opponent quickly before they could bring their full industrial capacity to bear and then use their resources to knock over the next target).

edited 3rd Dec '14 6:26:08 AM by MattStriker

Not to provoke Russia, but to stir up conflicts between the Allies and Russia until they start their Cold War early, then try to turn it into an actual war while I literally sit behind a firework show, and finally, harvest what's left on the scorched earth in a quick, ensuing battle once my foes are done fighting each other, like a calm vulture looking upon the would-be corpses begging to become my foods.

For the Jewish and Russian captives we have come across, I wouldn't shove them into death camps right immediately, they would work great as our helots until they have outlived their purpose, wasting away their lives through a well-planned sleep deprivation so no one would raise an eyebrow about my grand scheme.

As for my presence, I would mask myself as a shadowy figure that no one could comprehend me, as if I'm some kind of Humanoid Abomination straight out from Lovecraftian novels, those who try to figure out who we are would inevitably become insane, or getting stricken with despair and hopelessness.

Am I evil enough?

edited 21st Jun '18 11:07:39 AM by Mhazard

Please for the of God know that this doesn't reflect my worldviews at all, I'm only playing devil's advocate here

For starters don't waste money on the Holocaust. At least until after I've won, given if I'm Hitler I'm still a genocidal supervillain after all. For that matter, realize the Jewish science of atoms might be worth keeping around, and give special dispensation so they don't mess with it. The atom bomb idea sounds a promising deterrent in case things go south. Granted, since I hate the Jews and my policy was run on hating them as much as the Communists they might cause issues, but it's the best I can do

Advise Japan not to attack the US. America may enter the war anyway, but the Axis Powers can't look like the bad guy for starting it and I'll hope they don't. Fire my quack doctor and get someone better, I need the right medication when I'm trying to conquer most of Europe at minimum. Don't fight Russia in winter. I can't win a land war with Russia, just find another way. Probably should hire assassins to take out Stalin, his successor may be less ruthless and competent

To be truthful, I dont think there ever was any way Hitler (that is, the Nazi's) could have taken over Europe. France was never going to let him get away with attacking Russia, Russia and England were never going to let him get away with attacking France, and America was never going to let him get away with attacking England.

And sitting still means letting the nationalized economy eventually crash. He was screwed no matter which way he went.

To be blunt. If I am Hitler I am going to cock this up and be the same historical psychopath that started one of the largest wars ever witnessed by humanity as a whole.

The way the Nazis built their nation, ran their corporations and factories, and even how they ran their military all contributed notably to their downfall. The only reason they got as far as they did was that between the depressions impact on the world, the draw down of militaries, and the beating Europe took in WWI most of the other nations were not in very good positions to contest Hitler. The USSR was helmed by a fellow madman who had been causing extensive damage to his nation and especially his military via his grasping paranoia to secure his personal power. France attempted to hold the German's back were not fully prepared to deal with what was thrown at them. The UK was in similar position. Once the other nations got on their feet after Hitler opened the hostilities that was the beginning of the end for Germany.

There were so many assorted flaws with the Nazi government, their infrastructure, their economic structure, and their military structure you would have to scrap everything including Hitler to change it.

Thought exercise then, you are now FDR, who somehow is in charge of Germany instead of the USA, but still got that conquering Europe itch. What do you do?

You’d still have to stop after getting those territories in the 30s.

There is no way Germany could’ve won WW 2.

Zip. nada.

Hitler lost the moment he invaded Poland.

Worst of all, they committed genocide for no other reason than prejudice. That's literally the only reason the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, homosexuals, Slavs and other groups they hated-because they don't like them. This isn't just atrocious from a moral perspective, but from a pragmatic reason since they wasted so much on it. And it didn't just take money out of their more important war effort, but it permanently and eternally made the Nazis the Villain by Default in history

Edited by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93 on Sep 2nd 2018 at 11:21:39 PM

Related thought experiment:

You are Der Kaiser, defeat Le Entente Cordiale.

Win the propaganda war in the US.

Go back to 1913 and assassinate Conrad von Hotzendorf.

Oh, and take out Moltke the Lesser while you're at it.

Could Germany, under any circumstances, end up "conquering the world"? No, but the caveat here is that that was never the goal. What Nazi Germany wanted was lebenstraum, a greatly expanded territory in which to colonize and grow their population. That new land was to have come from the territories of Eastern Europ and Russia. The only reason Hitler invaded France was because he was afraid that France and Great Britain would have invaded him once he was fully committed to fighting Russia (and because France was such a ripe and easy plum at the time). The only real option Germany had was to forgo fighting a Western front and just focus on Russia alone. If Hitler had done that, would France have let him get away with it? Maybe, their whole strategic doctrine was focused on defense at that time, but Poland was their ally, and there was no way for Germany to attack Russia without going through Poland first. Technically, to get at Russia, Germany had to go to war with France first. The question is whether or not France would eventually have attacked Germany in retaliation? We will never know.

Does this counterfactual involve being perpetually sleep-deprived and on meth throughout the war like the real Hitler was?

Probably. I mean, success depends on what the French would do. That would drive anyone to drugs.

Yeah, about that... I don't find the second front argument very convincing, given that there was no Western Front on land to speak between the capitulation of France and the start of Barbarossa, a period of nearly a year. Sure, there's Afrika Korps, but that's only a couple of panzer divisions - practically pocket change in terms of manpower. The Nazis had that long to refit and upgrade their army, which was barely motorised at the start of the war - out of 100 or so divisions they had in 1939, about 88 were ordinary infantry/mountain divisions that relied on railways and horse-carts to get around. France was basically a non-issue by the time they got around to invading the USSR - in fact, I'd question the relative investment needed to occupy the country versus defending the Rhine frontier against a fully mobilised French Army (which had already tried to launch the Saar Offensive, mind).

To be fair, though, the invasion of France was pretty much down to sheer dumb luck. Hitler originally wanted the Wehrmacht to turn around from Poland immediately and launch an uninspired repeat of the WWI Schlieffen Plan, right into the teeth of the waiting Allied armies in Belgium. The OKH protested and managed to delay the invasion, and Manstein slowly convinced Hitler to launch an offensive through the densely-wooded Ardennes, which he eventually pushed for despite the objection of his generals. The state of Allied command-and-control was bad enough that they couldn't react in time as the invasion force painstakingly extricated themselves from the jammed-up forest roads, and the scattered pillboxes across the Meuse happened to be manned by fresh French recruits whose exposed telephone wires were cut by German artillery fire, preventing them from calling for reinforcements. Even then, the crossing was very nearly a disaster - French artillery wrecked most of the assault boats trying to cross the river, and a hilariously out-there scheme to seize the Nieves-Witry crossroads by landing 200 Grossdeutschland troops on Fi 156s went pretty much as you'd expect. Eventually the Luftwaffe managed to suppress the French artillery, and the fight eventually came down to a smattering of Grossdeutschland and pioneer squads that made it across the river and stormed the French pillboxes one by one. Everything went as well as Hitler could've possibly dreamed of - if that didn't give him the capability to successfully invade the USSR, I don't know what would've.

For all his intelligence at taking over Germany and the Nazi party, when it came down to it, Hitler was a fucking moron. Not listening to his generals, not thinking long term (No, his 1000 year Reich doesn't count. He didn't even bother to put the country in total war status until the latter half of the war. He could've used the Jews as slave labor, but this fucking racist dumb fuck decides "Nope. We have to be as evil as possible and kill em all!". Always insisted that his army attack far more than his supply chain could reasonably support.

Nazi germany lasted In SPITE of him, not because of him.

The problem with invading France isnt just defeating and occupying France, its the near certainty that, given enough time, the Brits will invade the continent in an attempt to take it back. Therefore, to hold on to France with any degree of security, you also have to take down Britain. Germany couldnt do that and conquer lebensraum in E Europe at the same time. Hitler made the wrong choice, and paid the consequences. But was there ever a right choice?

As for their treatment of the Jews, the Nazi's were elected in part based on their nationalism, which ideologically depended on blaming a scapegoat for all the problems the Germans had suffered. Without a scapegoat of some kind, the couldnt perpetuate the myth that the Germans were the victims of unfair treatment, and therefore were justified in conquering their neighbors. A lesson in that, for today.

As for killing them off, the Germans tried using them as slave labor, and couldnt make it work, financially. A modern, industrialized economy depends on the kind of high return, skilled labor that slaves have little incentive to deliver. It was called the "Final Solution" for a reason.

Edited by DeMarquis on Sep 7th 2018 at 8:24:22 AM

"Hitler should've listened to his generals" is a pretty outdated meme at this point, honestly. He made the occasional sound decision (Ardennes offensive, going for Ukraine instead of Moscow) and his generals had no problem making plenty of bad ones on their own.

The problem with not invading France would be having an active French, British and possibly Belgian army rushing B across the Rhine Valley as soon as the Wehrmacht has its back turned. Meanwhile, the Kriegsmarine's surface fleet is getting ground up to bits by the Royal Navy in Norway. There's no way to invade the USSR without neutralising the Allies in Western Europe, which they did in real life at a relatively low cost, through immeasurable luck. Otherwise, you'd, well... be fighting a war on two fronts, which is the kind of thing that our scenario sought to minimise in the first place. And there's no way to fully neutralise Western Europe without knocking Britain out of the war, which, with the Royal Navy still around... yeah.

(Unrestricted submarine warfare is an option, sure, but let's see how long you can keep that up before America comes knocking with the full industrial might of Ford and General effing Motors)

Therein lies the problem Germany had regarding the use of submarines in BOTH world wars. They focused the U-boats almost exclusively against merchant shipping when they could've instead used it to chip away the British Royal Navy ship by ship until they refused to leave port. Hell, even port wouldn't have saved em.

The US Navy realized such potential, about half of the Imperial Japanese Navy was struck down by the Silent Service including many of their cruisers, battleships and carriers.

That sounds like a good way to lose 100% of the U-Boat fleet instead of just 75%. Convoys are slow and easy to track down, while warships are fast, heavily-armed and often supported by ample air cover. Remember that the IJN tried the exact same thing, and found out to their great displeasure that it's not a good idea when the enemy decisively outclasses you in ASW tactics and tech. The USN submarine fleet went after Japanese merchant shipping at first - they didn't really much success against the heavies until around the Philippine campaign, when the IJN was rapidly losing its air wing. Going after a fully armed and operational battle station Royal Navy, sonar and MAD and all, would've been straight-up suicidal.

Not in 1939 or 1940. The RAF was depleted and antisubmarine warfare as we know and understand of that era was not yet fully realized.

Which brings up the next thing. The doctrine needed wasn't hunting down fleets. It was piecemeal chipping away the fleet ship by ship. Have a sub blast a lone destroyer that's looking for you, it'll take much longer to replace a sunk destroyer than it is to fire torpedoes, confirm the hit, leggit back to port and then set out again two weeks later. Eventually, the Royal Navy will run out of ships over the course of 6 months if you're hunting the sub hunters. Doubly so if you're periodically hitting their ships in or just outside of port. Convoy escorts and air power don't mean much if you sink an enemy ship at her moorings. Eventually such tactics would lead to the other side refusing to leave port owing to depleted state.

The IJN enjoyed quite a few successes going that route, it was a submarine remember that finally took down USS Yorktown. IJN submarines also kept a huge portion of the US Navy on its toes at all times even when allegedly ASW tech and tactics had advanced to the point of countering it. (USS Indianapolis comes to mind.)

The US Navy's submarine force had to do the same starting 1942. The US surface fleet was so depleted by November that we had no alternative. Seriously, for a brief time in November 1942, we had only one operational carrier in the entire Pacific and very few cruiser weight or heavier ships beyond that. Our industrial capacity wasn't churning out ships faster than they could be sunk until late 1943, most of the ships that iconically fought in WW 2 such as the Essex class carriers, were all under construction or at the drawing board during Guadalcanal when the US was on its worst footing. Between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the heavy attrition of 1942, we had very few reserves for the war at sea. That the Japanese didn't simply press any of their attacks to corner and destroy the US Navy when it had several opportunities to do so despite potentially being heavy on losses had more to do with Japanese failings than "superior" US Navy strategy. Remember after Midway, Spruance had to leggit back to Pearl himself, he had very little airpower left and his surface group was significantly outnumbered and outgunned by the Combined Fleet just behind the Kido Butai. The Japanese could've cornered us right then and there, to hell with the losses of Akagi, Soryuu, Kaga and Hiryuu. Would've been lossy from what remaining air forces we had on Hornet and Enterprise and the stuff on Oahu but we didn't have the ships or shore defenses to stave off such a determined attack. Pyrrhic Victory perhaps, but it would've seen the US Navy effectively driven from the Pacific as an effective fighting force.

The thing is, the US Navy at the time knew it. They knew they had to exploit Japanese failings in 1942 at every turn because if they would've pressed the attack, we would have lost. Thus turning to submarines by late 1942 to whittle away their warship numbers was a major boon to us. The Japanese couldn't protect their supply lines and press against the US Navy at the same time if their own warships were the targets as well. Every ship taken down by submarine in 1942 and early 1943 bought the US Navy more and more time for its own replacements and expansions to come online.

And submarines were working both ways. They simultaneously bought time for the US Navy and whittled away the US Navy's power at sea to a critical level.

The same could hold true for the U-boats, less convoy attacks, more warships sunk would've freed up a lot more space than the handful more Liberty ships they did take down would have ever contributed. And once the Royal Navy was out of the question, the convoys were doomed and easy prey. It's hard to starve out a naval force (as was attempted by the U-boats), it's easier to simply destroy it ship to ship.

The only thing I can see working is managing to persuade the French to use their fleet against the Brits, which would ether be done by seizing them, persuading just the crew, or persuading Petan, probably by not only forgoing taking French territory and maybe offering them some British colonies. This could only work after the British attack on the French fleet. After that the combined French and Italian fleet should be able to keep the Brits out of the Mediterranean. Launch only limited raids on Britain to pin the RAF and send most of your forces to North Africa. Up to the Suez Canal if not farther. From there you hope the Empire collapses, with India declaring Independence. Britain is forced to sue for peace. From their try to make peace with the British. Then while your enemies are reeling, angry, and desperately trying to hold territory in Africa, and maybe fight off Japan you launch the war agains the Soviets.

This is also an unlikely scenario. Were already bumping up on the limits of Hitler's racism, he was contemptuous of the Indian "freedom fighters" the Axis allied with and believed the British should hold India, as they were the "superior race". Also I don't see how to keep America out of the war, maybe don't use U Boats so much and only ally with Japan tacitly rather than officially. Their is also the problem of Italian and French ambitions clashing, as well as those of any Arab Nationalists who would assist the Nazi's. These could be used to play them off against each other to Germany's benefit, or it could lead to Germany being drawn into their squabbles. Finally we have the possibility of a Black Swan. Specifically that instability in Britain and France, and the fact that after any peace treaties the USSR would be offering the only avenue for revenge against the Germans could lead to Communist Revolution, which would reopen the Western front.

Edit:Also I don't think Hitler would be able to forgo humiliating France, leaving it better off geopolitically than they were before the war.

Edited by JackOLantern1337 on Nov 27th 2018 at 2:12:50 PM

Just be nice.

So, what I've gathered from this thread is that Hitler and Germany were doomed no matter what they did.

Focus on the West and ignore the USSR? Stalin uses the time to industrialize, increase the size of the army, navy, and airforce, and then invades with the Zerg Rush to end all zerg rushes. Meanwhile, he probably still hasn't finished GB off yet, due to them being essentially the largest island fortress ever and backed by half the world to boot.

Focus on the USSR and ignore GB? Churchill uses the time to fort up even more, industrialize, and have the RN wreck the Kriegsmarine and the RA bomb everything they can touch. Meanwhile, Germany probably hasn't finished off the USSR, and the US is probably gonna join any day now, whether because FDR finally gathers the popular support needed, or because PH gets attacked by Japan.

He can't ignore Poland, because of lebensraum, and the USSR won't just ignore an invasion that brings Germany to their doorstep, so he needs an alliance with them. He also needs to invade Poland, because if he doesn't then the USSR probably will, leaving Germany with less resources to fight off the USSR when/if they invade.

But invading Poland makes France and GB mad, and making GB mad makes the US angry. He needs to invade France to take at least "some" of the pressure off his back, but doing that just makes GB and thus the US even angrier. Not invading France isn't an option, because that leaves GB friendly ports to ship troops and supplies to.

You've got to wonder whether Hitler realized he was done for no matter what he did, and if that contributed to his mental degeneration over the war.