From a military perspective what he wanted\intended to do had zero chance of being accomplished. With zero chance i dont see any good decisions as possible.
How far would Hitler have gone?
- Thread starter The Flemster
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From a military perspective what he wanted\intended to do had zero chance of being accomplished. With zero chance i dont see any good decisions as possible.
You mean, taking over Eastern Europe?
Why is that 'impossible'? It's plenty possible, but he didn't lead very well militarily. He should've stuck to politics and ideology.
Why is it impossible? A strong enough state could take over any place, and Nazi Germany was certainly the most powerful European state of its time.
The other countries had more allies, even still i am not so sure it was the most powerful European state on its own anyway.
Yes, it was. But you're right about the others having more Allies, which is the only reason why they one. One on one, Nazi Germany would wipe out any other nation.
Germany did have a political ally in Spain, though, and military allies with Japan and Italy.
That is what made the whole thing so crazy. Japan didnt really have much of an impact militarily and Italy was mostly due to Mussolini and not supported by the population plus little impact militarily as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
Pure nonsense.
My understanding is Hitler was hoping that the US would sit this one out or join forces to take on the Russians.
He did not want stuff about the Holocaust leaking out (many of his own soldiers were not aware of the slaughtering of Jews, it was all low profile, top secret stuff going on, and many thought the Jews were being relocated, but not slaughtered).
It seems his intentions were to eventually use the US as an ally to fight against a common enemy, the Rusians. But who knows how long that coulda lasted since Hitler and the US were both control freaks!
Hitler had so much love for his nation, and for what he called his people, that he believed he had the right to exterminate anyone and anything in his way.
If all woulda went as planned, eventually I imagine Hitler woulda wanted world domination though, yes. He hated the lifestyle in the West. He hated Hollywood, and even blamed the Jews for that too. He wanted to control everything.
But you have to understand, as corrupted and vengeful this evil dictator was, he really did love his nation so much that he justified what he was doing as being for love. Many dictators still think like this today.
There was lots of chances even Corporal Hitler would have "won".
Britain(and her Commonwealth) & France(at least not declared after Poland) might have stayed out of it. U.S might have stayed out of it(completely).
Good men(and their countries) decided to do something about it.
Britain(and her Commonwealth) & France(at least not declared after Poland) might have stayed out of it. U.S might have stayed out of it(completely).
Good men(and their countries) decided to do something about it.
Bah, neither side was 'good'. Certainly you, Nietzsche fan, must agree.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Amusing but off base. W is pronounced V in Polish, just as it is in German. Warszawa is pronounced var-SHA-va.
As noted by another member, Hitler would have died eventually, and perhaps soon. So the question comes down to speculating about what his successors would have wanted to do.
As we can see with our 20/20 hindsight, it's very difficult to predict the future. Stalin WON World War II! And where is his communist empire now? The Japanese LOST, and their country was heavily damaged! They are now one of the world's major economic powers.
For that matter, Germany lost too, and on top of that it was cut into pieces and one piece languished under communist rule for more than forty years. Yet it's in great shape now.
One thing that we can probably say confidently is that once the war ended the Germans would have scaled back their genocide of Jews, Slavs and Gypsies. The Nazis were compulsive and meticulous recordkeepers, and I read that captured documents indicated that the leaders recognized that these killings could only be gotten away with in "the fog of war." After the war, even a victorious Germany would not have been able to continue the Holocaust.
It could have happened that way. Some of the more thoughtful Americans were more than a little disappointed with the course of history after we decided to enter World War I on the British side. (And understand back in that war there were quite a few Americans who thought we should have sided with the Germans.) Despite being defeated, and largely because it was also humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany rose from its ashes to become a threat to the whole continent. What might they do in 25 more years if we helped the French and British beat the crap out of them a second time??
Of course, that was all settled when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Suddenly we were drawn into the war on the Pacific Front, so it would have been impossible to not also support our allies in Europe.
I've always wondered how Hitler felt about the Japanese doing that. They really blew his plans. Considering how hard it was for the Allies to win WWII even with American participation, it's quite possible that they would have lost without it.
As per my earlier comment about "the fog of war."
The concentration camps themselves were well-known. Documents in Eastern Bloc capitals that have only become accessible since Perestroika show that there were about three times as many camps as we ever suspected, so it would have been hard to keep them secret from civilians, much less soldiers. But the same fog of war interfered with communication, so nobody really understood where the Jews from the camp in their city were going when they were loaded out.
Of course a phenomenon of such great evil and of such great scope could not possibly be kept truly secret, and reports did leak out. But no one believed them. Even the Jews in America thought it was just Allied propaganda to drum up more support for the war effort. They figured they'd see their families again when the war was over, so long as our side won.
It had been a comfortably long time since anything like that had happened in the West. Slavery, the Inquisition, the obliteration of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, the genocide of the North American Indians: these were all history lessons. We were better than that now!
When the war ended the European children had to cope with the realization that their parents' generation had allowed the Holocaust to happen and some of them even participated, while we American children had to cope with the realization that our parents' generation had deployed nuclear weapons against civilian targets. It's no wonder there was a "Generation Gap" in the 1960s, and one of its key slogans was (and still is
) "No More War."
Do you really think the U.S. regarded the Soviets as enemies at that time? We were beginning to be a little skeptical about communism, but the imperialism that really frightened us didn't start until after WWII, when they began gobbling up all the countries in eastern Europe that we thought we had helped liberate.
If Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, I believe that a sizable contingent of the American people would have lobbied to stay out of WWII, but I doubt that very many of them would have advocated fighting on the other side just to contain the Russians. Hitler could not have predicted the state of U.S.-Soviet relations after the war ended with a German victory. We still would have had no good reason to be inimical to the Russians, and therefore no good reason to ally with a Germany that had just gobbled up our good friends in France and the U.K.!
It was a play on famous words. However Hitler and his coterie were so out of touch with the direction most of the world was moving, that yes, from nearly every perspective they were evil. One of their worst crimes was the complete destruction of their own country, Germany. That's how you know they really didn't give a fuck about Germany their country, so much, as becoming massively individually powerful men.
REPLY: In my opinion, total world domination was his goal and he came very close to accomplishing all that. Had Stalinist Russia failed at Stalingrad to stop the German Army and their allies, there was no one left to stop them AT THAT TIME. The German army defeated the combined forces of France and England and the rest of western Europe in 5 short weeks in the early summer of 1940. They were unstoppable at that time.
In my opinion, had Hitler invaded Russia that summer, 1940, there was no one who could have stopped the German army. They would have consolidated the countries under their control and moved on. They knew about nuclear fission, had workable jet fighters, and were far ahead of all others in rocketry. They wasted valuable time on a pointless air war with Britain and such. That is my opinion and nothing more than that. ...traveler
Knowing about it and manufacturing anything to use it are two different things. They were a long way away from having a bomb.
But not in service before the Allies. (And they were only just workable).
Pointless? They were trying to remove Britain from the war. It was only as "pointless" as attacking any other country they were at war with and that could stage a comeback if left alone.
I understand that they were within a few years of having the bomb and they were trying to create a long range jet bomber that could strike the US once they had the bomb ready.
They had the jet fighter complete but had just tested it and we were able to end the war before either of these could take place. We also took the fighter plane and it's designs of which I am convinced we created our own versions of them and those versions were the start of the idea of flying saucer due to a mistake from the media in how they really looked. I believe he would have created and used the bomb against us if he had a little more time.
There was no end in sight to what Hitler wanted, he wanted the world, he wanted power and there would have been no end to the thirst.
REPLY: And I guess you fancy it was Britain and the USA that defeated Germany. The Russians had won the war BEFORE THE NORMANDY LANDINGS. The USA and Britain and all the rest took on 20% OF THE GERMAN ARMY and none of it`s air force AFTER NORMANDY. THE RUSSIANS DEFEATED GERMANY, and we helped a little bit. The Russians already had them on the run and would have won without our help. That`s what happened. ...traveler
You're making this ridiculous assumption based on what?
I stated facts and you extrapolate them to a position I haven't even hinted at.
You do realise the air offensive against Britain was prior to Russia's entry into the war don't you?
None of it?
Ever heard of Bodenplatte?
Hmm sure. After a few more years, and if we hadn't done the tiny little bit
we did do a large portion of Europe would have been Russian now.You're making this ridiculous assumption based on what?
I stated facts and you extrapolate them to a position I haven't even hinted at.
You do realise the air offensive against Britain was prior to Russia's entry into the war don't you?
None of it?
Ever heard of Bodenplatte?
Hmm sure. After a few more years, and if we hadn't done the tiny little bit
REPLY: The Germans defeated the French , British, and all other Europeans in 5 short weeks in 1940. I say if they had attacked Russia that summer of 1940 no one could have stopped them. You brits managed to get some 250,000 men back to Britain. Were you going to take on the German Army ? I don`t think so. You just ran away from them with your tails between your legs and us Americans had no desire to enter the war and did not have an army capable of helping much AT THAT TIME. A year and a half later it was all we could do to deal with the japs. It was not until 1944 that we got serious about taking on the Germans . Russia already had them on the run. THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED. I am an American. Do you think I feel good about that. I do not. It is what happened and I refuse to lie to myself about it. And yes, we turned our backs on you Brits. The Germans came so very close to winning WWII it is amazing. And they would not have stopped with defeating Russia. What love did they have for the Japanese ? NONE. They would have consolidated their victories in Russia and moved on just as they did in France and made them a part of their armed forces as they did with the French. Russia stopped them, no one else. ...traveler ....PS The Russians lost 27 million people fighting the Germans. The USA and Britain lost less than 1 million military and civilian combined fighting both wars. The war against Germany and Japan. Who do YOU THINK did most of the fighting ? The Russians lost 400,000 soldiers in the BATTLE OF BERLIN ALONE. That is about as many total losses the USA and Britain sustained each, NOT COMBINED, FOR BOTH WARS. ...TRAVELER
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