yes it should be possible in HoI4 but it should be difficult, this is a tread about real life
Was Sea Lion possible?
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yes it should be possible in HoI4 but it should be difficult, this is a tread about real life
Yeah, though it should be possible, even in game it should be something you have to put a lot of time and resources into doing. Not a matter of "well, I've just beaten France, I'll just quickly roll over the UK before I get onto the Soviets". You should have to be planning for an invasion and begin preparing the correct forces and equipment years in advance (which, obviously, reduces the amount of time and resources you can put into other things like beating France and preparing for Barbarossa).
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Sure, it was possible: had Germany won WWI and taken over a substantial portion of the Royal Navy in the peace talks and imposed naval building restrictions upon Britain instead of the other way around, she may have had a chance if the Royal Navy took too long to rearm in the 1930's and Germany could invade before British shipbuilding capacity got back up to full speed. But, no, it wasn't even remotely possible starting in 1936. One need only look at how few causalities were inflicted by the great air battles of the pacific between the US and Japan to see the limitations of aircraft against naval targets; it would be extremely generous to say that the Luftwaffe could sink even a few dozen British destroyers, but Britain had over 100 destroyers and over 700 small littoral warfare craft while German naval aviation was second-rate at best. The only way sealion works is with a fundamental shift of power in surface fleets, air power alone is not adequate to perform escort duties during WWII.
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In much the same you are talking about the stretch of terrain (channel), they would be talking about fundamental inability of German army to achieve a breakthrough on the numerically superior, well fortified masses of armed men. Like most do today about German chances against Soviets.
Ardennes was not about applying overwhelming force in one point in the frontline. Ardennes was about applying overwhelming force in the place where there was no real frontline established, and then aggressively exploiting it so that there never was a proper frontline formed in front of the spearheads. That is the essence of bewegungskrieg - winning the war by movement, not overwhelming force. Ideal of bewegungskrieg is not to use any force at all, just forcing enemy to surrender/withdraw by maneuvering alone.
Ardennes was successful, because it successfully defied conventional planning. And by and large, historians are creatures of conventional thinking. They are chiefly concerned with what actually was, not with what hypthetically could've been.
I'm talking academia, not video game forums.
There are people out there who think that Germans didn't lose the war at all. There's even a subreddit for this sort of people.
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Bewegungskreig is one of the 2 key German principals of warfare during this period. The other is the shwerpunkt. Based on the performance of the two armies it seems unlikely that the French could contain a German spearhead breakthrough regardless of where it fell. It is certainly possible that they could have - but not certain, or even in my judgment, likely. The Germans had the capability to crush the French army. They did not have the capability to cross the channel.
Could the German Air Force in all her glory, have sank any British Fleet that sailed out to interdict her invasion force?
Not all or even most, the home fleet had well have a hundred ships at any given time.
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And the ships would have had air cover and dont forget that UK had better anti aircrafts guns on their ships.
Yes, it demolished the conventional wisdom that Germany would attack 100 km further north, as the French had anticipated for 20 years. Complete paradigm shift there.
I have no idea what makes you think that. European armies were more than capable defending in depth and had plenty of reserves. Even if breakthrough was to be achieved, the armour would be mauled and would not be able to exploit it well.
An astute remark.
You should have informed French General Maxime Weygand who upon his inspection of the french border had concluded that there was little possibility of German attack though the Ardennes region due to the difficult terrain.
Also, certain Marshall Petain had described the Ardennes as impenetrable. He was followed by General Maurice Gamelin who stated that Meuse is Europe's best tank obstacle.
Other than those three nobodies, you are absolutely right.
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If Germany won the Battle of Britain in 1940, and had complete air superiority, what would have happened next?
We know terror bombing didnt win the war for the allies, but what would the Germans do next?
And i guess what should the Germans had done next if they wanted to win the second world war?
Begin targeting major port and rail installations. Strategic bombing of factories by the allies were relatively ineffective as were attempts to sink convoys by the kriegsmarine however if you combine the convoy war with attacks on port and rail infrastructure you can bottle up what supplies make it through the battle of the Atlantic at a distributed number of small ports. Without the ability to move supplies to the cities and factories of the country quickly the UK will have a number of very bad options. The key here is that you cannot defeat Britain entirely but if you can knock her down you can keep here there until the situation changes. It is important to deny US aid a base of effective operations.
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In Adolf's shoes, given the resources available in mid-1940, I'd have gone after infrastructure and in particular oil. Away from south-east England, double down on air-mining the approaches to ports. Build more Condors and of course more subs.
It probably still wouldn't have worked, but an invasion - pfeh.
I'm of the school of opinion that Germany couldn't have got much further than they did get IRL in North Africa, regardless of forces committed there, unless there is a very serious anti-British rising in Egypt. Italy could and should have attempted to take Malta, on the other hand.
It probably still wouldn't have worked, but an invasion - pfeh.
I'm of the school of opinion that Germany couldn't have got much further than they did get IRL in North Africa, regardless of forces committed there, unless there is a very serious anti-British rising in Egypt. Italy could and should have attempted to take Malta, on the other hand.
Uh,what I said was they expected the attack 100km north. You "corrected" me by pointing out three senior french leaders expected the attack 100 km north.
You sure showed me?
Three french commanders (one of which was assigned to specifically to plan the defense) stating that essentially the area need not be defended, allowing mechanized and armored formations to bypass French defense ENTIRELY, thereby tossing practically ALL of French war planning into the rubbish bin is too subtle?
By the time French would redeploy meaningful forces 100 km(assuming you have the communications at that point, and ignore the fact they were engaged, and Luftwaffe bombing), enemy armour would conservatively move , say, 200 km.
200km is roughly the distance to the Channel coast from Ardennes. So, French would be deployed just in time to see themselves be completely cut off and surrounded.
With the historical OOB minus the losses from winning the Battle of Britain? I don't think so. Not in 1940 at least (and if you move Sea Lion to 1941, then Britain has that much more time to continue building up and creating armies).
Hell, even Goering felt it was a fool's errand to plan on using the Luftwaffe to secure an invasion. Rader and Donitz, too.
Say what you want about Hitler's meddling in army affairs from 1942 onward, but he really had asked the impossible from the navy and air force on this one.
Sealion was impossible with the historic equipment of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht.
If the FW190, the Me323 and the He129 were available in numbers and the Bf109F4 the mainstay of the 109's at the time of the fall of France, plus better tactics, only then the Lufwaffe might have had a bigger chance of winning the BoB, plus giving a possible good supply through the air for ground troops.
He129 and Bf109F were produced in Q2 of 1940, Fw190 was operational in August 1941 (but first flight in 1939 as was the case with the He129), only the Me323 was a late bloomer.
It is difficult to say what the effect would be of German boots on British soil, but in documents of the period it's clear that Churchill was close to a conditional surrender; (some video on misconceptions of WW2 on youtube, that I can't find anymore). Eventhough after the war Churchill said pretty much the opposite on many cases.
If the FW190, the Me323 and the He129 were available in numbers and the Bf109F4 the mainstay of the 109's at the time of the fall of France, plus better tactics, only then the Lufwaffe might have had a bigger chance of winning the BoB, plus giving a possible good supply through the air for ground troops.
He129 and Bf109F were produced in Q2 of 1940, Fw190 was operational in August 1941 (but first flight in 1939 as was the case with the He129), only the Me323 was a late bloomer.
It is difficult to say what the effect would be of German boots on British soil, but in documents of the period it's clear that Churchill was close to a conditional surrender; (some video on misconceptions of WW2 on youtube, that I can't find anymore). Eventhough after the war Churchill said pretty much the opposite on many cases.