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Originally posted by Kevin E. Duguay
What if Germany had gone to a war production footing before 1942?

Good point. What if they had match their production to sustain a prolonged war, not just a campaign, already in 1938? *brrr*

Originally posted by DerC


I remember reading (William Shirer: Rise and fall of the third reich)that the Kriegsmarine could not assemble enough landing craft.

Well, sea invasions have been mounted through history without dedicated landing craft. The german army would have got ashore given enough time. The cruxial players would have been the air forces and the british navy (the german navy does not even count as a major player). With the german air force assembled in its entirety giving dedicated support to the invasion, instead of bombing britain, the RAF would not have been able to break through, and the RN would have been decimated by air attack.
Methinks.

The Germans and the Itallians had taken Gibralter. The Mediteranian would have become Italy's little pond to sail around as they wished.

Egg Shen.....EGG SHEN!!!!:mad:

Originally posted by DerC

As for my 'what if'... I couldn't think of anything else except what if operation Barbarossa had been started two or three months earlier? I know, it's been said before and it's not that good.

I thought it was!

Originally posted by Egg_Shen
Egg Shen.....EGG SHEN!!!!:mad:

Red rum... REDDD RUMMM ! ! !

...all I can say is "Jeremy's spoken". Everyone knows your name now, so deal with it. My name is Glenn--you know that--defend yourself with logical reasoning or at least well -informed bullsh it. Most of these guys have done that for years. I'm defending you, but I have limited patience. Give it your best shot.

simmering here?....I think I detect a bit a heat building here.

...once again, we have a tempest in a teacup. Everyone's entitled to their opinion here, whether it's historically motivated or based on false premises. That's what we do--we evaluate each argument and discuss its merits--and we do it in a civil and dispassionate manner (ha ha) That's why this forum is much like the old Roman and present US Senate--we talk a lot and eventually a consensus develops. The only problem we have here is that a majority vote is not tallied, and the subject generally gets off-topic sooner or later. (When in doubt, take the high ground)

I do think i have struck a nerve here with so people, I should of never incited this, but since I did keep arguring. Its really funny.

What if Hitler had waited a year to invade Poland and Japan had backed off for a year to calm the Americans.

The most interesting thing about the whole war to me is - it started (in Europe) over Poland and the allies gave it to Russia when all was said and done - talk about a sellout.

Figmo

No one "gave" Poland to Russia, they "liberated" it with massive soviet armies.

And our opinions about the matter (the opinions of the western allies that is) really had little if any value to the Russians. This was made all to apprent during the cold war.

They also imposed their will on every other Eastern European nation and people. And they did it in a way that was hard to protest (well hard to protest and remain breathing).

As for Hitler waiting a year. Nope that notion has less value than the swamp land beside the local landfill.
Stalin had his own agendas, and Hitler didn't have time to fiddle over waiting for the perfect moment.

Hitler could have won in 41, but well someone has to win and someone has to lose. He blew it and paid the price.

Agreed about Poland - and by the end of the war the Western Allies were willing to convenently forget a lot because they were tired of war. The other part was just a "What-If" however unlikely.

Figmo

What if...the US had never developed the atomic bomb (and neither did anyone else--put that in your egg roll :p ) . What would have been the result of operation Olympic? Would we have really seen middle-aged Japanese women attacking invading GI's with wooden spears on the beach? What kinds of casualties would we have seen? Would there have been more mass suicides like we saw in Okinawa?

What if the above were true and Japan had launched the third wave attack on Pearl, and they had more/better replacement aviators available to cover losees, and they hadn't lost four fleet carriers at Midway?

And what about if Germany had completed the Fuhrer-class battleship and its own fleet carrier program, and Doenitz had gotten his wish to have more submarines? What if they were into sharing their tank technology with Japan, which then produced the Mitsubishi version of Tiger I's and Panthers?

What if Daimler had merged with Chrysler in 1938? What if Hitler's last name had been Schicklegruber?

What if Hitler had decided not to pick on the Jews?

(I think Germany would have won the war... just my interpretation of that whole "I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse" promise)

Hitler used the Jews to gain political power. As such, it is unlikely history would know of a person named Hitler in the absence of the depression and the lack of a scape goat people (the Jews).

But as barbaric as his notions were towards those people, there is absolutely no reason that his atrocities to the Jewish had any direct influence on the course of the war.

Now his policies towards the Ukranian peoples sure had a profound effect on the course of the war.
If he had been able to see past if his view, that the slavs were all lesser peoples in his eyes, he would have noticed how little they liked the Russian peoples.

Liberating as opposed to conquering that region would have made the capture of Moscow somewhat an in the bag thing in most cases.

Just goes to show, politics ideology and commonsense rarely have much in common.

Hitler & the Jews:
Confiscated property of those sad victims was used to finance the war (via Swiss and Norway)
And that made an huge impact.

A.

Hmmm not a bad point.

Originally posted by KG Erwin
...all I can say is "Jeremy's spoken". Everyone knows your name now, so deal with it. My name is Glenn--you know that--defend yourself with logical reasoning or at least well -informed bullsh it. Most of these guys have done that for years. I'm defending you, but I have limited patience. Give it your best shot.

who what?

Originally posted by rlc27
What if...the US had never developed the atomic bomb (and neither did anyone else--put that in your egg roll :p ) . What would have been the result of operation Olympic? Would we have really seen middle-aged Japanese women attacking invading GI's with wooden spears on the beach? What kinds of casualties would we have seen? Would there have been more mass suicides like we saw in Okinawa?

Well, I have been through this issue over and over, and it is very difficult to discuss it in a rational manner with americans.

In the absence of certainties (as in any other "what if" situation), perhaps Occam's razor is the best tool: The most likely explanation is the correct one.

The official explanation (we all know what it is) simply does not hold water. For starters, if the objective was to save lives, why the rush? Why not wait the japs out a little longer, at least until after the soviet invasion of Manchuria. This was expected to have a dramatic impact in the japanese leadership, and it did.
Secondly, the top leaders of the US armed forces were convinced that japan would surrender soon without a resort to atomic bombing. Especially MacArthur, whose men would have borne the brunt of any invasion was dead set against it, and said so publicly and privately.
For these reasons, and others I won't go into, the official explanation is not plausible. It does not make sense and therefore must be considered false if a better one is presented. There is one that is more likely: The Bomb was used in the context of US/Soviet friction, which started for real in the summer of 1945. a) to demonstrate the new weapon to the soviets; and more importantly, b) to bring about a speedy japanese surrender so that potential territorial gains by the soviets on the asian mainland could be countered.

So bring it on, anyone who would say such a thing must hate America, revisionist bullcrap, somebody who goes out to make a point like this can't be trusted, yaddayadda. I have heard it all before, and I don't give a rat's hindquarters.