People often think of Nazi Germany as a kind of cancer that, if left unchecked, would infect and overrun the entire world. But logistically, I don't see how 68 million people could have pushed out beyond the Near East.

Force projection - every European army that attempted to fight concerted, sizeable resistance outside Europe failed miserably, eventually - from Alexander's, to the british empire.

My thinking is that, even if his forces had broken Russia and the Luftwaffe had bombed the RAF out of existence, he could STILL have not sent his armies as far as the Middle East - the supply routes would have been too shaky to keep them supplied much beyond Turkey, and certainly not to Iraq/Iran. Europe would have been the biggest prize he could realistically hope to hang on to.

Your thoughts please, gentlemen.


Jaybee.

if russia fell hitler would have a large supply of oil
i wouldn't see a supply problem in that case

I don't think he would have bothered with the Middle East....the Suez Canal, yes, because that would have been extremely important to anyone as it has great strategic value (assuming the Italians couldn't get it on their own as history kind of proved) just as securing the Straits of Gibraltar would have....and with all of the resources Russia could have given them, in the event that they had defeated the Soviets I doubt that they would bother going any further....

I mean there's only so much "Liebensraum" the German people could possibly have needed....

Hitler taking out Russia is a big maybe. I don't think he ever had much of a chance.

And going beyond Europe, even if Hitler had defeated Russia, would have been very difficult. Very few railroads to carry the supplies. And the few railroads make them an excellent target for air attack and for partisans. Plus, the farther Hitler went, the more troops he would have tied up in garrisons.

You don't use front-line troops for garrisons....

Ironically, during the war in the North African Desert, the Germans and Italians were accusing the British (and vice-versa) of putting oil in the wells to make the water undrinkable. While they were bitching off at each other, the huge oil reserves of Algeria, Lybia, Egypt et. al. were sitting there waiting to be discovered. Imagine what Hitler (or Rommel, who had his shit together far better than toothbrush-face) could have done if they'd added two and two and come up with the idea to dig for oil in the German-occupied desert? No supply problems there, if they'd been smart enough to realise it.

You don't use front-line troops for garrisons....


So what are we using in Iraq?

Think about it...you do if you have to have enough garrisons. And garrisoning all of Europe would take a LOT of troops. Just look at Yugoslavia during WWII. Toward the end of the war, most of the German garrison was front line troops.

Ironically, during the war in the North African Desert, the Germans and Italians were accusing the British (and vice-versa) of putting oil in the wells to make the water undrinkable. While they were bitching off at each other, the huge oil reserves of Algeria, Lybia, Egypt et. al. were sitting there waiting to be discovered. Imagine what Hitler (or Rommel, who had his shit together far better than toothbrush-face) could have done if they'd added two and two and come up with the idea to dig for oil in the German-occupied desert? No supply problems there, if they'd been smart enough to realise it.

Hmmm...interesting idea, except that unrefined oil isn't all that useful. Getting it to a refinery would have been tough.

Your thoughts please, gentlemen.
It would be a simple matter of using the resources taken from occupied Russia and allying with Turkey and Iran. Germany could use these allies the same way they used Italy's Libya: as a route to new lands, in this case, British India, which would've welcomed any resistance to British rule. Additional assistance from Japan, pounding at China, could have lead to Axis dominance in Asia.
There would've been severe losses, of course.

Personally, I think thinks would have slowed down considerably once Nazi Germany claimed the last streaches of mainland Europe and the Mediterranean. They were hurt at least as much as everybody else and they would want to sit on their prize to rebuild their strenght. They would have spread peacetreaties all around and set out to get their war and support industries back on track.

Five, maybe ten years later they would mop up those things they had missed. Like England and whatnot. Once that is out of the way, they would move onto former English colonies such as India if Japan had not already claimed it.

Of course is assuming that 1)America had never entered the war on either Pacific or European fronts, 2)Germany hadn't gone right off and pissed Russia off, 3)Hitler doesn't get knocked off anywhere down the line. If hitler died, chaos spews everywhere and all bets are off.

Actually I think you meant BRITAIN and former BRITISH colonies.

If Germany hadn't pissed Russia off there would have been no D-Day and even Britain and america combined would have had one hell of a time budging them from France.

Don't forget the majority of Germany's armed forces died on the Eastern Front....Tigers vs. Shermans would have been a different story from Tigers vs. T34s

G.F:

If Germany hadn't pissed Russia off there would have been no D-Day and even Britain and america combined would have had one hell of a time budging them from France

Germany needed the oil in the Black Sea/Caspain Sea. The primary reason Germany lost the war in North Africa was lost due to lack of oil. Hell, the Nazis were using oil from their stoves to power their tanks when they attempted to flee the British.

Hence the "If" at the start ;)

I was replying to the above poster about his scenario which included that "if".

G.F:

Germany needed the oil in the Black Sea/Caspain Sea. The primary reason Germany lost the war in North Africa was lost due to lack of oil. Hell, the Nazis were using oil from their stoves to power their tanks when they attempted to flee the British.

The reason the Germans had a shortage of fuel (and troops, and tanks, and food, and everything else) was that they had no control of any part of the Mediterranean. The British were able to interdict much of what the Germans tried to ship to North Africa.

Now, here's an interesting bit...what if Britain became a fascist country, more along the lines of Italy (who still had a monarch as well as "Duce")? What if they allied with the Axis? What if Germany, through this alliance, now had free reign to British oil and petroleum?
Now, THAT would be scary...:eek:

Hitler did not intend to attack Asia. Asians being a different race, he saw that as the ideological province of his allies the Japanese.

Hitler was much smarter than most leaders. Makes us wonder: was he wrong, or are we wrong? I don't know, I don't know -- send me a bonghit before I think too hard on this dangerous path.

Hmmm...interesting idea, except that unrefined oil isn't all that useful. Getting it to a refinery would have been tough.

Build one on site and surround it with AA batteries.

Personally, I think that Hitler and his plans were doomed from the moment he tried to conquer more of Europe than France and the low countries. At that point, the momentum of blitzkreig was lost, and he essentially overextended himself to take on Russia and Britain at the same time. Not to mention that the Battle of Britain was a fiasco that he needn't have fought.

I've found that empires based of rapid conquest generally don't stand for very long. Often, less than a decade. Take the empires of Alexander and Genghis Khan and contrast those with Rome and China, for example...

it's really hard to say what doomed the third reich

in my opinion it was one of two things
first he decided to chew on russias butt
second america got involved
either one of those alone could have stopped hitler

it's really too bad that poland didn't have the equipment for her army
for if they had, the outcome would have been very different

i agree, leopold.

the reason hitler got stomped was because of a combined effort between american and russian fronts.

russians are extremely stubborn about hitler's kind of behavior, and are very similar to americans in the fact that if hitler HAD succeeded in toppling russia, they would have had to kill every last citizen...they would never allow a foreign power to control their homeland.
i can see it now, be it new york, or moscow.....civilians throwing molotovs down on german invaders, crowds massing in the streets to kill any germans they found.....
thats how it would have gone down, too.

So what are we using in Iraq?

Think about it...you do if you have to have enough garrisons. And garrisoning all of Europe would take a LOT of troops. Just look at Yugoslavia during WWII. Toward the end of the war, most of the German garrison was front line troops.
You use whatever is available.
As well as German troops in France, garrisons were also made up of Vichy French. The Balkans were garrisoned with Balkan troops as well as Germans. Italians, Greeks. Any conquered nation - particularly in Europe at the time, where there were plenty of Nazi sympathisers and plenty more willing to go along as long as it meant steady pay and a hot meal a day - will supply troops for any cause, even a conquered nation. I'm fairly certain that even the russians would have had enough peasants, disenfranchised poor, and nazi sympathisers to serve as garrison troops had the Germans won. The USSR was a gaggle of smaller nations absorbed into one large one - and several of those smaller nations had no love for many others.

For example. There were Korean troops captured at Normandy, fighting for the Germans. They were forced to fight for the Japanese army after being captured. They were captured by the Russians later and forced to fight for them. After being captured by the Germans, they were stationed at Normandy.
Presumably, when captured by the Americans, the Americans found no use for them at the time - unless the war in France had gone badly later on, at which point I'm sure they would have.

Iraq is also garrisoned by Iraqis who sympathise with the Americans.

Iraq is also garrisoned by Iraqis who sympathise with the Americans.
sympathise?
or maybe they wanted something more than what could be offered under saddams brutal heel

don't forget saddam was a top of the line class "a" dufus
a truely hated and despised man
you won't find many that will sympathise with him besides those he grants power to.

The longer the occupation lasted the more the situation would have become like Yugoslavia where the Germans could not safely exist outside the garrisoned towns and had to travel in convoys from one town to the next town.

This sounds alot like the current climate in Iraq.

and why is that?
it is because america is trying to establish a government controlled by the people

the ones that are responsible for the killings are the ones that stand to lose bigtime if such a government is established

The point is that even with the best of intentions and a more advanced technology the USA is having a difficult time controling Iraq so why would we assume that the Nazis would have been able to control the USSR.

point taken and aknowledged
one of the last things hitler wanted was a two front war

russia is the country that laid to rest the perception of the invincible nazis

Hitler had allies. Japan in the Far East, namely.

Once the Turks saw a German victory over Europe, they probably would have allied themselves with the Krauts, again. That's both the Far and Near East.

But that's completely ignoring America, which by the end of the war, was producing more arms than everyone else combined.

And like Clockwood said, the only way Hitler could have marched East was if he sat on Europe after it was his.

Well it depends, if Hitler did beat russia and his head swelled like Alexander the greats did and ent his army rampaging through asia, he would of been stuffed. If he'd patiently held europe, gathered soldiers resources and supply routes etc, when 1990 came he might of been able to take asia :eek:

Well it depends, if Hitler did beat russia and his head swelled like Alexander the greats did and ent his army rampaging through asia, he would of been stuffed. If he'd patiently held europe, gathered soldiers resources and supply routes etc, when 1990 came he might of been able to take asia :eek:

No chance. Even the tech-savvy euro armies of the 90's couldn't have mounted a long-distance fight; no way Hitler's of the same period could have done likewise.

Jaybee

The point is that even with the best of intentions and a more advanced technology the USA is having a difficult time controling Iraq so why would we assume that the Nazis would have been able to control the USSR.

Those "best intentions" are a large part of why the US is having so many problems. Do you really think the Germans would have listened to bleeding heart liberals at home telling them not to enter mosques or hurt civilians?

You are also forgetting that the cultural differences between the USA and Iraq are far greater than those of Germany and the USSR at the time. To the Iraqis, the US is a truly alien invader - to the Russians, the Germans would have been an evil one, but not one alien in that sense. In trime, the Russians would probably have settled down to a greater extent than the Iraqis ever will, when they discovered that the Germans were not too much different from their own leaders and life went on very much as before. To the peasants, there would not have been too much difference between Stalin and Hitler, once the initial annoyance at having been invaded had worn off and national pride dulled over a couple of years of occupation. Actually, once the people of russia discovered that under German rule the trains ran on time and they had more food than before, they might have begun to enjoy the deposing of their former leaders.

The western alliance is hampered by its own people's ideology, not by its inability to complete the task at hand.

i agree, leopold.

the reason hitler got stomped was because of a combined effort between american and russian fronts.

russians are extremely stubborn about hitler's kind of behavior, and are very similar to americans in the fact that if hitler HAD succeeded in toppling russia, they would have had to kill every last citizen...they would never allow a foreign power to control their homeland.
i can see it now, be it new york, or moscow.....civilians throwing molotovs down on german invaders, crowds massing in the streets to kill any germans they found.....
thats how it would have gone down, too.
so so true

or the humility.

going by what nicklwj said.

If you over extend your forces, which hitler had done, you no longer fight in a Manouverist (spelling?) way. You force your troops into attrition mainly because of the lack of support elements. When the nazi's drove through Arlon forrest and ultimately encircled Allied troops which led to the fall of dunkirk. That was the perfect example of Manouvre warfare. Combined arms, Dislocation, Surprise, Deception, Quicker Tempo etc etc

P.S. America and Russia weren't the only ones instrumental in the downfall of Hitler, don't forget the Poms in the Battle of Britain (and other nations), and the Aussies in Africa.

Harlequin:
In trime, the Russians would probably have settled down to a greater extent than the Iraqis ever will, when they discovered that the Germans were not too much different from their own leaders and life went on very much as before.
The Nazi view of all Slav "races" as untermensch requiring extermination for lebensraum might have stopped life going on very much as before. One reason the Germans had a hard time is that they started executing ordinary villagers - causing survivors to become partisan guerillas....

Leopold:
one of the last things hitler wanted was a two front war
And Hitler was the guy that insisted the invasion of Russia go ahead before England was defeated.

There is no way Hitler could have taken over the world, he should have instead been a CEO or big business owner, that way he would have only needed to take over the world economically rather than totally. Hey, economic take over is easier, just look at Iraq.

England was not fighting as a separate entity in WWII.

Yanks, please get this through your skulls.

The state occupying that small island above France is called THE UNITED KINGDOM.

England was not fighting as a separate entity in WWII. Yanks, please get this through your skulls. The state occupying that small island above France is called THE UNITED KINGDOM.Fine. But in return you must agree to stop calling all United States citizens "Yanks."

And doesn't the United Kingdom consist of several islands in addition to Albion, as well as the orange part of that big green one next to it?

Pink you mean?

Yes, you're right, but that is a concept that would have ruined the required simplicity of the above statement, which I am afraid was the only way I could make things easy enough to remember for certain "United States Citizens".

Yan·kee Pronunciation (yngk)
n.
1. A native or inhabitant of New England.

it pisses me off too. living in europe, everyone calls me a yankee. im from michigan.

it would be like calling an englishman "irish", or all germans "bavarians".

it shows ignorance.

Well then, you know how it feels for a Scot like me to hear the UK referred to as England.


Yank (AMERICAN) Show phonetics
noun [C] (ALSO Yankee) INFORMAL
a person from the United States of America:
DISAPPROVING The place was full of yanks.

did i do such a thing? hardly. i said E-N-G-L-I-S-H-M-A-N.

you are aware that there is a place called england, and the people there are distinctly english, yes?

i dont call scots english, as that would just be belligerent.

that being said, you have been informed of the opinion of an american on the subject of "yankees". to call all americans "yankees" is not only incorrect, it is rude.

that is, unless you want me to start calling you "eurotrash", as it is the equivalent.

:)

I didn't say that you did. I was referring to other posts....your post came well after those.

There's yankees (a term used in the US and not here) and yanks (a term for americans used by Brits). Probably rude to call you either, but not the same thing.

sorry, i came off as a bit confrontational.
unintentional.

No problem :)

Well, the way I view it, it doesn't matter who calls what, in the end we all die, so why does it matter weather you are a "yank" or an "englishman," as far as I'm concerned, we're all "dead men" and thats the best name for everyone on this earth.

Nothing survives.

i do.

But logistically, I don't see how 68 million people could have pushed out beyond the Near East.

You don't understand the Nazis ideologically -- they were nationalists. Therefore, their goal regarding Asia was to place it in the hands of a responsible power of the highest grade of Asian ethnicity -- the Japanese.

And if you read history, you'll note that nation was their ally and highly respected by Hitler.