Could Germany have won ww2? what would it take? how big was the "chance" that Germany had to win? What big, irrational mistakes allies/axis do?
Regards/
Klaus
Regards/
Klaus
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No they couldn't. They lost the war on December 10th 1941, when they declared war on the USA. Even if they had been able to somehow defeat the Soviets in the East, and invade Britain, someday they would have to deal with the nuclear destruction of their cities.
Not only that, but letting Himmler set war production instead of Speer was not the wisest thing they could have done. Mass production is more important than plunder and making tanks that were each a work of art. They lacked the ability to properly fight a total war.
Not only that, but letting Himmler set war production instead of Speer was not the wisest thing they could have done. Mass production is more important than plunder and making tanks that were each a work of art. They lacked the ability to properly fight a total war.
Yes, Germans had a good chance to win the war or prolong it for tens of years.
Fanatical zeal of Hitler would gone with him and the successors would be more flexible to set a peace with the USA had not atomic war destroyed the world earlier.
Similar to the USA - the USSR conflict.
Fanatical zeal of Hitler would gone with him and the successors would be more flexible to set a peace with the USA had not atomic war destroyed the world earlier.
Similar to the USA - the USSR conflict.
Originally posted by Kasperus
So it was impossible that Germans would have got nukes just as americans did?
Maybe not impossible, but highly unlikely. German nuclear research had gone up a dead end and fell behind the Allies project significantly.
Well, I will not claim that I know that much about military techynologies in the ww2 but isn`t it rather illogical considered that Germany had about the most modern weaponry at the beginning of the war? Soviets had hardly any research btw during the war but shortly thereafter they had already a nuke. If Soviets could do it, why couldn`t the Germans?
Actually, Germany did NOT have the most modern technology either during or before the war, despite some splashy breakthroughs during the war. Britain was years ahead of them in radar, and significantly ahead in radio, crypto, and computers. The USSR was ahead of them in metalluargy and subsequently in engine technology (the Germans, for instance, found they couldn't build T-34s of their own because they couldn't make such power-dense engines).
The US had the advantage of unlimited funds and access to the best nuclear physicists in the world (thanks largely to Britain). It simply was not reasonable to expect the Germans to be able to make an atomic bomb while lacking so much in the way of basic physics and the capital/facilities needed. the USSR was actually ahead of the Germans in nuclear research in any case, and got a boost from their spyig activities in the US. Not much chance the Germans would beat BOTH the US and USSR into nuclear production, and in that battle second best wasn't good enough for them.
Nope, the best the Germans could have done is last long enough to win the A-bomb target sweepstakes for Berlin.
Let´s see. In 1939 war was declared on Germany by, among others, the UK. The biggest empire in the world. In 1941 the USSR was added to the list of enemies, i.e. country with the biggest army in the world. And then, after Pearl Harbour, Hitler declared war on the USA, the country with the biggest industrial power in the world. I ain´t no maths wizard, but I´d say Germany was way out of its league. The Allies had more men, more factories and were able to control the seas.
Mission impossible...
Mission impossible...
Germany could win the war if :
Germans troops didn't behave as barbarians assuming they are the "Herren Volk" on the eastern front in 1941 and Germany succeed to etablished puppet regime in the Baltics states, in Bielorussia and Ukraine, and created armies of volunteers really ready to fight and die...
Hitler didn't declare war to the USA the 10th december 1941,
Germans troops succeeded taking Moscow in december 1941,
Italians troops and Afrika Korps were more successful in 1942, and managed to establish a strong position in the Middle East,
German diplomacy was more active and successful and Spain and Turkey became allies.
And more important, Germany succeed to have a nuclear weapon and a strategic bomber or other trans-atlantic means to deliver the bomb to New York to face the american nuclear attacks on its main cities.
[EDIT] I will forget it, but it was already said, if Germany succeed to establish a real economy of war, standardized weapons and sent their women to work instead of basing their workforce on "slave" labor force.
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It is quite useless to write all the conditions needed for German victory.
One, however is important - if they were not Nazis and didn't behave Nazi-like. It is also paradox, because if they were not Nazis, they would not start global war (but local wars - yes).
One, however is important - if they were not Nazis and didn't behave Nazi-like. It is also paradox, because if they were not Nazis, they would not start global war (but local wars - yes).
Well, a militant Germany could have won. A Germany who hated the French instead of the Jews might have stood more of a chance. One where Speer was in charge of war production, where Einstein and his ilk didn't flee with their 'Jewish physics' to the US. Where the most skilled commanders, such as Rundstedt and Manstein were allowed to run the army instead of Hitler and his yes-men Keitel and Jodel. Where Raeder was allowed to run the navy, instead of the ineffective blundering of Hitler and Doenitz. A Germany with a less eratic man at the top, who wouldn't insist on immediately rushing of to Russia without finishing England, and let his commanders handle the battlefield work. However, this would require heavily altering the Nazi plank back in the 20s.
You're quite right. No use moaning about Hitler letting the Brits escape from France, focussing on British cities in the crucial stages of the Battle for Britain, the mistakes during Barbarossa (IMHO a mistake from the very start), declaration of war on the US etc., etc., etc., because WITHOUT Hitler there would´nt have been a war in the first place. There was a lot of resistance among German military leadership against the campaigns against Czechoslovakia and Poland for fear of an Allied attack. Hitler, however, gambled and the attack didn't come. His generals, however, wouldn't have taken this step, ever.
I don't think it was inherent to Nazis to make stupid military decisions, so IMHO it was possible to be a Nazi and win this war. I can easily imagine a smart Nazi who would say: "OK, let's pretend we like US and Jews, and dealy their extermination to the period after war."
But I see similar paradox - Nazis could come to such power only under Hitler, and at the same time they were unable to win a war under his command. Just imagine that some very reasonable guy takes the fuhrer's office just after conquest of France...
No, they lost it before that - on June 22nd, 1941, when they attacked the USSR. Hitler should have gone for Britain and maintain the non-agression pact with Stalin if he wanted total domination in Western Europe.
And get stabbed in the back by his trustworthy friend, Uncle Soso... I have an impression, that we already had a very similar discussion, Webbrave...
Cheers
Where could I find it? I was always under impression that Stalin just waited for Nazis' invasion... The only problem was that he didn't believe they would attack before the british campaign was over...
Well, Hitler was only a degenerating madman for the last three years of the war. If he drops dead just before he orders the Wehrmacht not to take Moscow, then you get all the big gambles that turned out well, without the major mistakes of later years. Or you could assume that the loss of Moscow wouldn't have broken the Soviet Union, and have him drop dead just before Operation Barbarossa. Of course, wothout the USSR it isn't WWII as we know it, but we're certainly looking at a German-dominated Europe, which was Hitler's goal.
The war was still winable. As large and powerful as the Soviets were, the Nazis could have beat them, especially if they hadn't slapped around the non-Russian Slavs and kept Hitler away from the planning room. Plus put someone sane in charge of war production, instead of a bandit like Himmler.
Originally posted by Kasperus
So it was impossible that Germans would have got nukes just as americans did?
February 10, 2002
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Still a Mystery: Nazi Germany's Atomic Bomb Failure
By PHILIP M. BOFFEY
A small trove of documents released last week throws cold water on the notion that high-minded German scientists tried to slow work on an atomic bomb for the Nazi regime during World War II. But the documents provide no definitive answer to the question of why German physicists, who were among the best in the world, made so little progress on an atomic weapon compared with their counterparts in the United States.
The idea that German scientists worried about the morality of atomic war and tried to head off the development of a bomb was given wide currency in "Copenhagen," Michael Frayn's award-winning play, which focuses on a pivotal meeting in September 1941 between Werner Heisenberg, the scientific head of the German nuclear project, and Niels Bohr, his Danish mentor. Both were Nobel laureates and towering figures in 20th-century physics.
The play is built around the differing recollections of the two men and the ultimate uncertainty of exactly what happened. In it, the Heisenberg character explains that he visited Bohr to warn him, in highly guarded language, that atomic bombs could be built and to feel him out on whether physicists on both sides could agree to stop the work. The Frayn play was greatly influenced by a book that argued that Heisenberg and his colleagues actually sabotaged the German bomb program from within, a view that is accepted by few historians who have looked into the question.
The puzzle as to why the German atomic bomb program stalled has several overlapping explanations. Some of the best German physicists were Jewish and had been driven into exile, where many worked on the American or British atomic bomb programs. Nazi ideology had only scorn for "Jewish physics" and thus undervalued what theoretical physicists could contribute to the war effort. And as saturation bombing ravaged German cities, the Nazi industrial machine increasingly lacked the ability to mount a vast bomb development project to compete with the American Manhattan Project.
Still, it is clear that German physicists, for whatever reason, did fail to push hard enough to reach the goal. Some attribute that to surprising technical errors, like a grotesque overestimate of the amount of fissile material that was needed and a failure to realize that readily available graphite, if highly purified, could be used to moderate the atomic reaction instead of scarce, hard-to-get heavy water. Others blame arrogance and complacency on the part of German physicists who felt that if the job was hard for them, it would be impossible for the Allies. And some believe that there was a genuine reluctance to work on such an awesome weapon, either for moral reasons or for fear of failing and being blamed for a national defeat.
Recordings made surreptitiously of Heisenberg and other German scientists held in captivity after the German surrender show that they were stunned by news that the United States had exploded an atomic bomb over Hiroshima and refused to believe that it had actually been done. Even in these early recordings, one can discern the beginnings of a search for the moral high ground, as one German physicist contrasts the American development of "this ghastly weapon of war" with more peaceful nuclear reactor research under Hitler.
Heisenberg's own version of his meeting with Bohr was set out years after the war in a letter that was excerpted in a book on the atomic bomb projects. He recalled starting his conversation with Bohr by raising a question about whether it was "right" for physicists to work on uranium during the war, given that it could lead to "grave consequences." He also said he had told Bohr that developing atomic weapons would require such a terrific technical effort that one could hope they would not be ready in time. He felt the situation gave physicists leverage to dissuade government officials from even trying to build the bomb.
That letter so angered Bohr that he drafted a number of responses between 1957 and 1962 that were never sent but were released last week by the Bohr family. As Bohr recalled it, Heisenberg left "the firm impression that, under your leadership, everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons." Bohr said that Heisenberg "gave no hint about efforts on the part of German scientists to prevent such a development."
Even with these latest documents, we are still left with conflicting versions from the two participants. Most historians seem inclined to accept Bohr's version as more probable and Heisenberg's as revisionist history, a view that gains credence by looking at Heisenberg in a broader context than just that single meeting.
David Cassidy, a historian at Hofstra University who wrote a biography of Heisenberg, says there is no evidence from any other sources that moral issues were of particular concern to Heisenberg. Indeed, he says, Heisenberg seemed most concerned about using the war to prove the worth of physics to the nation and its rulers. With those motivations in mind, it seems likely that Heisenberg would have made a bomb if he could.