Should an invasion of the US be very difficult to outright impossible in HOI4?

[Krafty]

And yet you cant prove any of it wrong, and have provided no evidence to the contrary, and are now running from the debate because you "cant" anymore.

Ok man. Have an nice day.

Theres a reason the Japanese turned down all reasonable advice NOT to attack Pearl Harbor and did it anyways. Its because they HAD too.

There is absolutely no realistic scenario where they just up and decide to let their war in China fail, their economy crash, their citizens starve, and own political power cease to exist.

What leader in the history of leaders, has voluntarily given up power.

Besides Fabian...

 

[Krafty]

I like how you think the plots to kill Hitler started in 1938.

Anyway. Thank God this game transcends the minutia of what exactly the tipping point for a tyrannical dictator's hold on power is.

I mean. How would things play out if the Allies always stop Germany at the Rhineland?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oster_Conspiracy

The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 was a proposed plan to overthrow German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime if Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. It was led by Generalmajor (major general) Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr

And to quote myself:

See: Wilhelm Canaris and the Abwehr.

Oster and Canaris thought about killing him in 36 according their memoirs, and research done by the Yad Vashem, but there wasnt ever a plan until 38. Of course various other groups, including Jewish and Communist citizens and undergrounds, plotted to kill him even as he sat in prison after the Putsch. He was a hated man by sizable yet minority part of the population.

After Oster was Oustered, Canaris took the torch and attempted to kill Hitler 19 times.

Today he's considered a Righteous Gentile at the Yad Vashem in Israel, displayed alongside Holocaust victims.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132720

Thats the only English news report I can find, but the efforts were successful.

You may not like facts, they may contradict what you already know about world war two, but like David Glantz shattered myths about Barbarossa, many new things have happened with regards to world war history in the past decade.

Perhaps you guys should study more.

 

[Rubidium]

I really think people forget that Germany was not on a full war economy until 1942 and that, overall, their industries were severely hampered by the US strategic air campaign.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Strategic_Bombing_Survey

If you add in the UK and Afro-Asia (not just Russia's) industrial base and present them as early total-war footing (like players represent for Germany,) Germany can become the mythical giant that American propagandists predicted at the time.

Not really. The effects of strategic bombing are heavily overrated, as the survey notes (and note that a lot of the original reports, in particular that one, were influenced by people quietly lobbying to make the air force a separate, equal branch of the military, largely on the basis of the perceived importance of strategic bombing).

More generally, even with "full war economy" the German industrial process had a lot of efficiency problems (and given their methods, were likely to be even less efficient at incorporating conquered industry) compared with the US. And their naval designs in particular were woefully inadequate (the US had been keeping up-to-date on naval technology, whereas the Germans were still essentially at WWI levels on a lot of basic design concepts).

That said, here we get to the game balance standpoint; WWII was not remotely balanced historically, but a game where you can play either side needs to be balanced somehow. So, in the game, the US needs to be beatable or there's no point in playing the Axis.

 

[Alex_brunius]

And yet you cant prove any of it wrong

What annoys me the most is that you don't even bother to go back and correct your many mistakes when they are clearly pointed out to you:

escort carriers that could carry 90 planes

No carrier on the list below (which is a fairly complete list of WW2 escort carriers) has a capacity near even half of your claimed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escort_carrier#The_ships

 

[Krafty]

That was the lack of a comma.

It was a typo. I mentioned that 9 posts ago. But I guess you're not actually reading anything I say.

 

[Krafty]

Ill quote my old post.

Ah you read that wrong or I typed it wrong, 160 carriers, including escort carries, 24 of which were Essex class that could carry 90 or more planes. Six were cancelled before construction in 1946, two under construction, along with 46 more CVLs and CVEs that could carry 12-60 planes depending on the class. Some of which were planned conversions. That were all cancelled.

 

[him_15]

I think the only way to force the U.S in to submission IRL during WWII era is nuke.

 

[Krafty]

Not really. The effects of strategic bombing are heavily overrated, as the survey notes (and note that a lot of the original reports, in particular that one, were influenced by people quietly lobbying to make the air force a separate, equal branch of the military, largely on the basis of the perceived importance of strategic bombing).

More generally, even with "full war economy" the German industrial process had a lot of efficiency problems (and given their methods, were likely to be even less efficient at incorporating conquered industry) compared with the US. And their naval designs in particular were woefully inadequate (the US had been keeping up-to-date on naval technology, whereas the Germans were still essentially at WWI levels on a lot of basic design concepts).

That said, here we get to the game balance standpoint; WWII was not remotely balanced historically, but a game where you can play either side needs to be balanced somehow. So, in the game, the US needs to be beatable or there's no point in playing the Axis.

This.

Ultimately German production increased the entire time until they fell. Despite the bombings. And the conventional wisdom now is that strategic bombing actually increased national morale and resolve, not the other way around.

Losing a few hours of production while you clean up the debris that the relatively weak bombs that were dropped the night before left, and you wont have to do again for a month, really didnt effect production like early historians in the 50s and 60s thought.

Especially after the opening of the Russian archives in 2001, we got alot of the German documents they captured, which was most of the stuff in Berlin.

We didnt get Berlin. They did.

So we didnt get good information until 2001.

Frankly put, everything written before then was wrong.

Much to dismay of people like Alex it seems.

I mean when I was a kid, people used to the think the Tiger was a good tank, and that the French were technologically inferior the Germans. People hadnt heard reports and seen field exams of Char Bis 1s with hundreds of 37mm hits without being knocked out. The anecdote of Rommel and his 88s was there, people lived to tell that tale, but for a long, long time, we though things like the S35. or the Char, were inferior tanks.

Today we know that those things arent true.

Some myths still perpetuate of course, like that Japan might not have gone to war, or that the P51 was the best fighter of the war. Some you might never dispel to some people. shrug.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

So basically the USA did manage to outproduce Germany Italy and Japan in mobile army, naval, and air assets. The engines tanks and planes from Detroit kept up with and surpassed axis production. Dockyards were on the coasts, not in Detroit. Edit- I guess there were some docks but I am comparing tanks and planes and trucks.

Edit stupid buttons too close together... moved edit into spoiler as an aside/separate point. looks like my first section already has a response.

Spoiler

If Germany wins against England AND Barbarossa you would have to keep the Japanese out of the war to keep the Americans out. Germany has lost a million more soldiers by the end of these conflicts, and even turning all Eurasia into slave labor won't let you just add all axis and allies together against the USA. Factoring in destruction of capital and losses to the Wermacht, this means there is a real lag in capability. I say no 1946 invasion possible. Earliest attempt 1948, by then somebody will have a nuke, both sides have 15000km range bombers, and the game is changed to who gets the first decapitation strike.

P.S. This is my guess as to how it would play out. Before man in the high castle tv show I would have thought nukes would have been used as historical, take out some industrial centers and let the enemy surrender. Now I wonder if a direct nuke on Berlin might be the first strike facing a successful Germany. Kill the centralized leadership and let all the conquered peoples take part in their own liberation.

 

[Krafty]

True, my point is that while the US can produce an absolutely mindblowing amount of ships to protect its coasts and prevent naval invasions, especially to challenge any sort of build up of ships, it could also, outproduce the Axis even if they could, by some magic, land on the US shores.

If the Axis cant put 50,000 aircraft up over the East Coast US, how do they beat the ungodly amount of airpower, a sizable portion of which has experience in the pacific and is geared towards fighting on the seas, and then win a war of attrittion against the kind of production the US had.

That said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Engineering_Works
https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/great-lakes-engineering-works

Detroit built ships. You can go see the yards. Theyre historic sites.

https://www.google.com/search?q=det.....69i57j0l5.2335j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Its on the coast...of the great lakes...

It produced hundreds of transport ships and civilian shipping, as well as barges, landing craft, etc. 60 of which went to the pacific.

They also produced the very famous Edmund Fitzgerald.

Must. Resist. Urge. To post. Lightfoot.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

The legend lives on...

 

[Alex_brunius]

Much to dismay of people like Alex it seems.

Sorry but I fail to see how me disagreeing with your other "opinions" has anything at all to do with the above...

Since you seem to care alot about this, Your opinions that I disagreed with and don't think you should present as facts are:

• How escort carriers had 90 planes
• How USA could have built 515 submarines a year at a $ cost of 15 Iowa class battleships "without drastically impacting other areas of production"
• How USA could have outproduced the Axis if not attacked directly and able to mobilize for war as a united nation
• How USA was going to finish 52 more Carriers in 1946 ( USA would either have won the war as historically in which case they were not needed, or if the war was going worse for them the reason for it going badly would in all likelihood not require more Carriers to fix given how weak Japan was, so most CVs would be cancelled anyways regardless to prioritize other things )
• How Detroit could outproduce the entire Axis alone ( In all arms combined we must assume when making such a general claim )

I do agree with you that USA had a mindbogglingly massive Industry, that invading USA during WW2 would be close to impossible for anything other then the rest of the world combined and how the strategic bombing campaign in Europe didn't achieve much considering it's costs.

 

[Krafty]

The first two I answered posts ago. Multiple times. You're still harping on the 90 planes on escort carriers, when I pointed out that perhaps my writing there, confused you. I never claimed 90 air craft go on escort carries. I said of the 160, many were escort carriers. Essex Class could hold, of which there were 24 eventually, 90+ aircraft.

I dont know what three means. I dont know what youre asking.

I dont know what youre asking in 4.

The last is in the link I posted, as well as any of the widely available production statistics for all the companies and efforts of the greater Detroit area.

 

[Krafty]

BTW the US built 122 escort carriers, with another ~140 either laid, about to be laid, or on paper. I think only 18 were laid in late 1945, but the slated production of carriers for 46, added 52 more carriers, 8 of which were going to be Essex class, but were all cancelled, other than two Essex.

its safe to assume without nukes flying, the US by 1947 could have had 250 carriers, and 300 by 1948. Or sometime within those years.

It built 119 escort carriers in three years. It expanded dockyards at the same time. And only stopped because the war ended. It hadnt hit a bottleneck yet.

So each year, the us produced more carriers than the previous. And there was absolutely no bottleneck on the horizon that would have stopped them from continuing to produce more each consecutive year.

As said, for 46, the plan was another 52 carriers, 46 were escorts, ontop of the ones already laid in 45, and Dean Acheson's memoirs suggest yet another 150 or so were planned in 1947 and 48.

You have to remember the Atomic Commission at Los Alamos didnt communicate with the war planning office of the united states.

Planning continued until three weeks before the bombs were dropped, AFTER the bomb tests, which were secret.

The war offices of the US planned for well into 1947, They had no reason to assume the war would be ended. Planning didnt even end after the war ended. Bureaucracy moves slow. For instance many of the slipways werent cleared and the ships scrapped until the 1950s, even though they stopped working on them in 1945.

There was a possibility of another hot war with the Soviets. So those plans simply got put on hold, and congress and the joint chiefs waited until there was a huge desire to rapidly disband the US military, right about the time the Korean war kicked off. There was always a possibility they might have to finish some of those hulls. Plus they had to work out repayments to the government and the sale of scrap and re compensation to the companies.

 

[Alex_brunius]

its safe to assume without nukes flying, the US by 1947 could have had 300 carriers, and 450 by 1948.

I never wrote otherwise either, but there is zero logical reason for them to do so when the ~150 Carriers they already built proved to be about twice as many as they would actually need to defeat all their enemies in a timley manner and secure a fleet mightier then the rest of the world combined.

The war offices of the US planned well into 1947, They had no reason to assume the war would be ended. Planning didnt even end after the war ended. Bureaucracy moves slow. For instance many of the slipways werent cleared and the ships scrapped until the 1950s, even though they stopped working on them in 1945.

There was a possibility of another hot war with the Soviets. So those plans simply got put on hold, and congress and the joint chiefs waited until there was a huge desire to rapidly disband the US military, right about the time the Korean war kicked off.

Ofcourse yes I forgot about that part. The mighty Soviet navy surely would have motivated the USA to build a few hundreds more Carriers.
How could I miss such an obvious historical "Krafty fact (tm)"?

 

[Yavanion]

Just want to pit in a few things, this is all abit off "what if anyway"...

There is one very deciding area where the germans as i understood it had a clear edge over the allies and that was its rocket and jet research program... to my understanding basically all other nationswere not even close to where the garmans were in this field... and we can argue the nuke, and what if the germans got it at same time as the USA...

The problem i see it is, USA wouldent had cought up with the germans in rocket and jet science without all the german scientists... and if both have the nuke, and germans have rockets and jet engines... sorry but i woldent give much for airforce that bascailly is outdate tech, rockets they cant intercept or jet fighters or jet bombers...

But this is fairly moot anyway since its a what if anyway...

 

[Krafty]

I never wrote otherwise either, but there is zero logical reason for them to do so when the ~150 Carriers they already built proved to be about twice as many as they would actually need to defeat all their enemies in a timley manner and secure a fleet mightier then the rest of the world combined.

Agreed, but thats not the context here. The context is with an Axis that is in a position to invade the US, thus making more assets more attractive. Opportunity cost personified. The US was in no danger in real life of invasion, so they didnt need them.

In OUR scenario, they have a threat of invasion, thus, they could easily produce those things.

Thats what we're talking about, what the US COULD produce to prevent an invasion.

Ofcourse yes I forgot about that part. The mighty Soviet navy surely would have motivated the USA to build a few hundreds more Carriers.
How could I miss such an obvious historical "Krafty fact (tm)"?

Ok again, the context here is that given a war with the Soviets, its accepted fact that they would have rolled all the way to Gibraltar. In that context, floating airfields are useful. Carriers arent about fighting other Navies only, they are also a platform to launch strikes, as was the case all throughout the pacific campaign.

Also, in these fantasy scenarios you have to think about what would realistically be useful, and then decide based on fact, what could be produced based on cost, labor, material, and production capacity.

As I showed you, the US could produce many options in huge numbers, it had the wealth, resources and workforce to do so.

If they needed to shift from carriers to sub, or subs to cargo ships, they could, and could outproduce anyone.

 

[Krafty]

Just want to pit in a few things, this is all abit off "what if anyway"...

There is one very deciding area where the germans as i understood it had a clear edge over the allies and that was its rocket and jet research program... to my understanding basically all other nationswere not even close to where the garmans were in this field... and we can argue the nuke, and what if the germans got it at same time as the USA...

The problem i see it is, USA wouldent had cought up with the germans in rocket and jet science without all the german scientists... and if both have the nuke, and germans have rockets and jet engines... sorry but i woldent give much for airforce that that bascailly is outdate tech, rockets they cant intercept or jet fighters or jet bombers...

But this is fairly moot anyway since its a what if anyway...

The Meteor was as good as the 262. Its speed was comparable, its engines more reliable, and its armament was better. 30mms look great on paper but are horrible for many applications have a slow RoF, horrible trajectory, low ammunition count and jammed regularly, where as the Hispano's were some of the best air to air guns deployed in the war.

Thats another myth. Their rocket technology was not more advanced. One man was more advanced. Wernher von Braun, who is now understood to have sandbagged their program because he didnt want Hitler to win.

"the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet."

 

[Rommel41]

Over 40 documented assassination attempts on Hitler go back as far as 1934. I'm sorry if you misunderstood my opposition to your statement.

Hitler kept power through several actual coup attempts and kept the entire nation, often to the final days, fulfilling his will and running his war machine.

When did the German worker say they were under more hardship than they could handle? I forgot about the workers strike and Hitler's removal after Stalingrad...or was it Kursk? I can't seem to find sources that show the reduction of production because the war was killing 1 in 4 of their sons at the front and 1 in 20 at home.

Wait. You even say production INCREASED, despite the bombing (which is still proven to have had a seriously detrimental effect on the availability of rolling stock and locomotives, which supplied everything) which obviously had more than a "negligible" impact. Read the actual reports, often they describe the failures that people crow from the roof as having been some sort of hidden fact.

And as for all the "details" coming out of Russia since 2001. Many of those sources corroborate what Keegan and such were saying for years and any educated historian, that reads between the numbers, could see without added Red Army bias.

Operation Paperclip really swept the field of actual, remaining, German technological aptitude. Russia got sloppy seconds. You really think the 70% of Germany briefly occupied by the Allies didn't give us enough insight into what German had? Hell. Read the US Army Manual on Germany from (March 1945) and it will blow your mind what the west already knew Germany was doing in every facet.

Anyway. I'm done with this opinionated and heated discourse. Reminds me why I backed away from these forums.

Back to the purpose of these forums and prep to smash the US (as could have been done in real life) with my Axis Alliance!

 

[hkrommel]

What leader in the history of leaders, has voluntarily given up power.

Sulla, George Washington, Cincinatus...but I'm just being cheeky

Frankly put, everything written before then was wrong.

Not true, and illogical to say so. When evidence conflicts then you look closer at a subject, assuming the evidence conflicts at all. You don't assume a particular piece of evidence is the gospel truth over another one without very good reason. For your statement to be true you need to show both that the more recently acquired documents contradict previous evidence, and that the more recently acquired documents are more reputable. The first is fairly easy, the second is very difficult 70 years after the fact (not to mention documents talking about "national resolve" under an authoritarian regime are inherently suspect, for good reason).

people used to the think the Tiger was a good tank

It was an excellent tank for certain purposes and outclassed the AFVs it would reasonably face for about as long as you could hope for in wartime. It had flaws, but so did every tank.

we though things like the S35. or the Char, were inferior tanks.

Inferior to what, if you don't mind me asking? They certainly had severe flaws, such as a hatchless turret (commanders couldn't see out through the cupola), the one-man turret forcing the commander to perform a multitude of tasks (all while not being able to see a thing), the S35 in particular was expensive (almost 1,000,000 Francs each) and had a poor suspension, and the French were short on radios making it even more impossible to coordinate the tanks. Commanders could barely see anything or even receive instructions!

Don't get me wrong, they were good tanks and with a few modifications most of these flaws would be fixed and you would have fantastic tanks, not unlike the T-34's early issues (the suspension/track problem and the high cost were going to be pervasive though), but they were hardly usable in a combined arms capacity as they were impossible to coordinate, and improvisation was extremely limited due to the commander's lack of situational awareness.

and if both have the nuke

IRL the Germans were nowhere close to having nukes. Their research was extremely basic and the path they were following was a dead end anyways.