So, if Hitler had won..

I've always thought that some of Germany's generals were brilliant but were severely hampered by Hitlers interference and paranoia/control freakery. If they had been left to get on with it, the end result could have been VERY different.

The battle of Britain could have turned out very differently. Casualties were outstripping production, both in terms of planes and pilots. The RAF were very much on the back foot when Hitler decided to switch bombing raids to the cities in response to a botched RAF raid on Germany.

Also D-Day could have been very different. Divisions of tanks could have shored up the German defenders in Normandy but Hitler had assumed personal control over them and was asleep at the time. Nobody was brave enough to wake him up and tell him, thus giving the allies several precious hours to capture the defences and dig in.

So yes, it could all have been very different.
 
If Hitler had beaten us in 1939/40, then took on the Soviets he'd have still lost anyway. If we were lucky, the Yanks would have waded in when the Wehrmacht was coming apart in Russia and liberated us, or the Russians would have ripped right across Europe, and we'd be living in a Communist satellite state the likes of which Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia etc. were up until the late 80's/early 90's.

All in my opinion of course. I'm convinced the Germans could never have beaten the Soviet Union.
 
If you look at the casualties the Russians had in WW2 could they have sustained that? They'd run out of men at some point surely?

I think without the western front then the Nazis could at least have held off Russia, I do agree though that I can't see them marching to Moscov.
 
The Halk said:
If you look at the casualties the Russians had in WW2 could they have sustained that? They'd run out of men at some point surely?

I think without the western front then the Nazis could at least have held off Russia, I do agree though that I can't see them marching to Moscov.
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Some historians argued that had the Wehrmacht adopted an elastic defence, resisting the Russians and inflicting casualties, but falling back under pressure and not allowing themselves to be forced into encirclements in "Fortress Cities" and ideologically masturbatory last stands, then they may well have bled the Soviets heavily enough to bring them to the negotiating table. However, Hitler's fantastical flights of fancy as the great general and conqueror ultimately led to the Wehrmacht's destruction in Russia. Indeed, from some time in 1944 the Allies abandoned plans to assassinate Hitler, they thought he was doing a better job than anyone in bringing about the Third Reich's demise.

In short, I think Hitler's military ineptitude and his insistence on meddling in military matters above his head would have led to Germany losing to the Soviets anyway, whether that was at Stalingrad, Kharkov or Kursk. Indeed, one of the key matters that separated Stalin and Hitler was that Stalin soon learned after the disasters of 1941 and 1942 that leadership of the Red Army was best left to those more suited, and he allowed the likes of Zhukov and Rokossovsky to take the lead. Hitler never did, and right up to the end he was planning grand counter-offensives and strategic master strokes, often with armies and divisions that had been annihilated months or even years before.

Edit. Another matter I think shows the strength of the Red Army, even after the casualties they suffered on the western front against Germany was Operation August Storm, when the Soviets were able to shift 1.7 million men to the far east, and rip through the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and destroy a Japanese force of some 1.5 million men so completely.
 
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The Funktopus said:
In short, I think Hitler's military ineptitude and his insistence on meddling in military matters above his head would have led to Germany losing to the Soviets anyway, whether that was at Stalingrad, Kharkov or Kursk.
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Interestingly, I watched a documentary last night about the new top secret russian tanks being developed during WW2, the T-34, with the biggest gun ever attached to a tank at that point. After one of these tanks first rolled onto the battlefield, taking the germans by surprise and destroying many german armoured vehicles, (but eventually destroyed by the germans), the germans decided they would target the soviet tank factories. Soviets literally uprooted scores of factories and moved them to safer places, employing women and children too, working as fast as they could and around the clock to produce more tanks. They produced about 15,000 T-34 tanks. Germans in reply to this developed an even more powerful tank (Hitler expressed how he wanted much much bigger and heavier tanks), but the production was much slower and they only made about 6,000. At the Battle of Kursk and then the subsequent Battle of Prokhorovka, the red army hugely outnumbered the newly german produced Tiger tanks, and because the Tiger tanks were slower in loading rounds, the T 34's were able to double or triple the amount of rounds fired off and ultimately beat zee german swine.
 
Aqueducts ! Sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health...

Oh wait, thats the romans.
 
"Virtual History" edited by Niall Ferguson has some interesting points to make on this. Definitely recommended if you want to read some possible "alternative" histories.
 
I'd imagine that eventually it would have turned into a 'union' of individual countries but who are ultimately under the control of the Germans. They would dictate laws through a central governing body that overrules any of the member countries own governments.

Oh hang on..
 
piggeh said:
I'd imagine that eventually it would have turned into a 'union' of individual countries but who are ultimately under the control of the Germans. They would dictate laws through a central governing body that overrules any of the member countries own governments.

Oh hang on..
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53? percent of Americans are German.

;) the empire simply moved. :cool:
 
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