let's play historical what if. von Paulus rolls the Reds at Stalingrad.

[ulysses]

How does the war in Europe turn out?

My take - long story short, "D-Day" is fought in South Carolina instead of Normandy, say 1948 or 49.

[elocs]

1. Ahh, the "what if" game that goes on and on and on and on and then it goes on some more?

Usually for a "what if" purpose. "What if" is not really a useful pastime.

[ulysses]

2. you can get back later if you need to think about it.

:D

[mainegreen]

3. The first atom bomb is dropped on Bremen?

In the spring of '46?

[ulysses]

7. there's that, yeah.

That's if Britain holds up, though. Or maybe other locations for airfields?

[Swede]

4. Nazi Germany gets the bomb and there is a nuclear war.

Followed by a cold war.

[htuttle]

5. ...followed by a cold planet.

[old mark]

9. Germany was not that close to developing the bomb,

closer than Japan,but not close enough.
I doubt the Nazis would have been able to mount a seaborne invasion of the US - probably would have gone to "cold war" status, with the Nazis holding Europe less Spain, and Switzerland, the Soviets hanging on to the land east of the Urals, and the Nazis barely holding the western parts. They really did not have the troops or the industrial capacity to successfully occupy all that territory.

I think the bomb would have been usd on Japan anyway - a land invasion of the islands would have cost millions of lives on both sides and the fighting would have lasted maybe ten more years. I think the Soviets would have joined the fight against Japan late as they did, and would have occupied northern Japan and all of Korea, maybe even pushing into East China and Indochina (Vietnam).

mark

[Thothmes]

6. Even if the City fell to von Paulus

The Soviets were getting stronger every day while the German forces and their allies in Russia were weakening. It would probably slowed the Soviet reconquest of their western territories and assault on Germany. Ike may have gotten to Berlin first.

[ulysses]

8. yeah, but if he gets through Stalingrad,

the Wehrmacht gets access to the Russian oil fields.

[Thothmes]

34. No, the wing of the German Army that was headed for

the Caucauses had alread been stopped. No access to the Russian oil fields until at least the Spring of 1943

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Then the German Army would have been smashed further east.

By the time the Soviets won the battle, Stalingrad was pretty much a smoky ruin. A point on the map. Plenty of production was still going on back east. You'd still have Kursk, only not at Kursk. And the Germans would still have been defeated on the Steppes.

And if they weren't, they'd still have put up a big enough fight to allow us to land somewhere in France. Much bloodier, and much longer, but the Germans would still have been defeated one way or another.

[ulysses]

11. but if the battle had been shorter,

and Paulus had gotten further east before the winter set in & before Stalin had time to send the Siberian troops...I'm not so sure that the production would have made that great a difference.

Maybe so, though.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Well, OK.

If the Germans had managed to win Stalingrad quickly, and if the still massive Red Army didn't matter, and if the Germans had, somehow, managed to conquer britain, and if they somehow managed a trans-Atlantic amphibious landing, then yes things would be different.

[ulysses]

15. the Russian army was still pretty massive after Brest-Litovsk.

Just sayin'. :)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. You're saying the Soviets might have signed a peace treaty?

Ha. Yeah, I don't think that would have happened.

[ulysses]

21. no, not the second time.

I am saying that a huge army is still only as good as its morale and leadership.

[muleboy303]

12. your "take" after how many "tokes" ?

south carolina ? ugh!!!

though more German successes in southwest Russia in '42 and '43
could well have resulted in NO normandy landings in '44
AND several German cities under a mushroom cloud in the summer
of '45 (with the same justification as those over Hiroshima and
Nagasaki... to prevent further Russian/Soviet penetrations)

[ulysses]

13. Hitler would have had a hard time mounting a seaborne invasion, yes.

Much less two, which is what it would have taken to take out Britain and then the US. They had plans, though.

[muleboy303]

19. yes they had plans

but not the expertise, developed capacity, nor the inclination

(if a cross-channel was by necessity ad-hoc, imagine a trans-atlantic?)

nope, the future belonged to atomic and ballistic.

sans England, thus no strategic bombers for ? years)

nope, Adolf knew he had to win fast or lose

(which i suspect was one of the larger reasons "why" he
directed Von Paulus at Stalingrad as he did)

a most enjoyable exercise though, most grateful for the opportunity.

(p.s. i meant to add a :) after "tokes?" in the previous post.

please pardon.

[ulysses]

24. that's a fair question:

given a cross-Atlantic stalemate, who develops strategic bombers first?

Glad you enjoyed the thread. :)

edit: I guess the B-29 was strategic, essentially. How about trans-Atlantic?

[muleboy303]

28. my best guess =

a race between the U.S. lead in strategic bomber capacity
plus aircraft carrier and atomic bomb expertise versus
German missile expertise (assuming the British Isles are
out of the equation) which to me, means

less than a 10% chance of German victory
perhaps a 20% chance of functional/agreed upon stalemate (truce/peace/ensuing "cold war")
which leaves a 70% likelihood of U.S./Canadian/Australian/remnants of
relocated British (and always the Soviets) "victory" in '47 at the latest.

[Thothmes]

37. The B-29

could fly from Portland Maine to Berlin (about 3700 miles) It could get from Berlin to Great Britian, but did not have the range to get to Iceland. With a ceiling of 31,850 ft. it did not have to worry about the Luftwaffe fighters over Germany.

[Deja Q]

17. Oh come on. We all know you'd rather see him roll Ann Coulter at Tanagra*

"Tanagra" is an ancient word not directly translatable, but historians believe - after engaging in years of painstaking research - the word translates into "Starbucks". Or was it "Olive Garden"? Oh well. Like I said, it's been difficult to definitively ascertain...

[Popol Vuh]

18. What If

Native Americans were only as tolerant as today's anti-immigration fool?

[ulysses]

22. why do you hate America?

;-)

Cherokee as world language?

[pampango]

25. The response, as you probably know, is always "It's different now".

The main difference, of course, is that the "anti-immigration fools" are now the ones who are already here, not the ones who are wanting to come here. "We got it and you ain't gettin' it" seems to be the modern motto of these folks.

What if, indeed, Native Americans had said the same thing and enforced a tough anti-immigration policy. :dilemma:

[damntexdem]

20. Sounds like you're ready to read some Harry Turtledove.

Several great series of alternate history.

[ulysses]

23. heard of him.

Maybe so. Love your sig, btw. :D

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. He is good.

Definitely a pulp writer.

[Terran]

30. Harry's not really a very good writer. IMO

He can crank them out, but for quality, you can do better.

I just re-read Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Years of Rice and Salt", which covers episodes of history on an Earth where 99% of Europe perished in the Black Death--from the 14th century up through the 21st. What results is mainly a long-term struggle between Islam and China, with eventually the rise of India (first users of the steam engine), Burma, and Native America.

Regarding the "anti-immigration" policies of Native America, in this book the Northeastern tribes formed a federation around the time Islamic explorers colonized Long Island, and, with the help of a wandering Samurai warrior who fled the powerful Chinese controlling the west coast of North America, begin to gear up an industrial society while maintaining their egalitarian government. By the 21st century, their federation spans and controls all of the Americas. They become quite a naval power and intervene in some positive ways with their influence.

Alternate history is my favorite genre--can ya tell? =]

(edit: typo)

[sofa king]

27. It might have shortened the war--for the Allies.

Stalingrad was more of a logistical failure than anything else. Holding onto that salient another six months probably wouldn't have mattered much to the overall course of the war, even had everything gone the Germans' way.

More likely, in my opinion, holding onto Stalingrad probably would have set the Germans up for an even larger disaster. For the second year in a row, Hitler had split his armies among three objectives, only two of them in the southern Soviet Union. The army best qualified to fight at Stalingrad, the 11th, which had just completed the siege of Sevastopol, was sent up to Leningrad.

So say that the 11th was instead diverted to Stalingrad, and together with the 6th Army they wore the Soviets out there. And say also that Army Group A somehow managed to fight nearly a thousand miles to Baku on the Caspian. The Germans would still be dangling their ass in the breeze, giving the Soviets hundreds of miles of open corridor between Stalingrad and Baku on the Caspian Sea in which to maneuver and descend upon any weak spot the Germans were showing.

The northern flank of these German operations were just as vulnerable. Operation Saturn, launched in conjunction with the Stalingrad battle, nearly entrapped Army Groups A and B as it was. Had their respective advances continued, they almost certainly would have been cut off and eventually destroyed.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Soviet Union could afford to lose everything it did at Stalingrad and far more in the way of troops and equipment. They were adding entire Corps to their armed forces every couple of months, while the German army was quickly being reduced beyond their ability to replace losses. The Soviets could afford to lose the oilfields of the Caucuses, because they had plenty more where that came from, while the Germans would have faced serious problems transporting that fuel anywhere beyond the local fronts--after the sure to be trashed facilities were rebuilt. German tank production was totally inadequate to the task and never was, even at the peak of production in 1944.

I think that deep down Hitler knew all this and was instead trying to aim for a political objective: the partial dissolution of the Soviet Union by cutting off the primarily Muslim Soviet Republics. And I don't think that would have worked, either.

[muleboy303]

31. very good analysis

'tis ironic that "ego" and "political perceptions" played such a role
in the chosen lines of defense at Stalingrad, Moscow, and Leningrad.

when it is arguable (of course, in hindsight :) that the further the
Germans advanced east, the easier it would be to attack them from the
west.

kinda makes ya wonder just how much colluding was goin' on, doesn't it ?

[taterguy]

29. The Russians only had a chance at Stalingrad because the Japanese fucked up at Midway

Suppose their scout plane didn't have mechanical problems?

They would have spotted our fleet first and put it at the bottom of the Pacific.

The US air forces that decimated Germany in 1943 would have stayed on the West Coast.

I'm not sure what the future would have held though since I haven't thought that far ahead (or behind)

ps: If Germany was gonna invade the US they would have come through Mexico or Canada. If they couldn't tolerate Russian winters then how well do you think they would have done in the South with no air conditioning?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. Huh?

You're saying the Soviets were successful at Stalingrad thanks to U.S. air forces made available in the Pacific thanks to the success at Midway?

[taterguy]

33. Yes

[Thothmes]

35. The battle for Stalingrad was from the fall of 1942

to early in 1943. The presence of U.S. bomber in San Francisco in 1943 would not have had a significant impact on the events of the Volga River.

[KG]

36. the invasion of russia was doomed from the start.

firstly, the jump-off date was way too late in the year. but mostly, russia was just too big a country to conqour, no matter the state of its military. lines of supply became hundreds of miles long.

at stalingrad, hitler made a classic military mistake of make a geographical point the object of attack, for propaganda reasons, rather than the russian army. the red army was happy to have hitler waste his army in the ruins of a city.

[ulysses]

38. he might have pulled it off

with better planning and less hubris - neither of which were going to happen, I'll grant you. :) And supply was a huge issue, yeah.

[neverforget]

40. I read a book about 15 years ago that Hitler's fatal mistake was

diverting the Panzers from the drive on Moscow to the Ukraine in 1941. Instead of destroying the Soviet military, Hitler became obsessed with capturing the Soviet breadbasket.

By doing this, it gave Stalin the time to build defenses in front of Moscow and bring in reinforcements from the Soviet Far East. By the time Hitler's operation to capture the Ukraine was over, it was Fall and the Russian winter had set in catching the German Army unprepared.

[sofa king]

47. Heinz Guderian felt the same way.

From his military autobiography, Panzer Leader, pp. 182-183:

I expected to be told to push on towards Moscow or at least Bryansk; to my surprise I learned that Hitler had ordered that my 2nd Panzer Group was to go for Gomel in collaboration with Second Army. This meant that my Panzer Group would be swung around and would be advancing in a south-westerly direction, that is to say towards Germany; but Hitler was anxious to encircle the eight to ten Russian divisions in the Gomel area. We were informed that Hitler was convinced that large-scale envelopments were not justified: the theory on which they were based was a false one put out by the General Staff Corps, and he believed that events in France had proved his point. He preferred an alternative plan by which small enemy forces were to be encircled and destroyed piecemeal and the enemy thus bled to death. All of the officers who took part in this conference were of the opinion that this was incorrect: that these maneuvers on our part simply gave the Russians time to set up new formations and to use their inexhaustible man-power for the creation of fresh defensive lines in the rear area: even more important, we were sure this strategy would not result in the urgently necessary, rapid conclusion of the campaign.

Admittedly, Guderian writes with a considerable degree of hindsight, but even he's aware of that and he supports the above quote with an OKH memo dated three days before the conference in question.

[KG]

42. esp since, right up until the end of the war, a substantial part of the wehrmacht transports

was still horsedrawn.

[ulysses]

45. heh - that's true.

Of course, you can't eat a truck when you're cut off...

[neverforget]

39. The Germans still would have lost. It might have taken a year or 2 more

to defeat them. A longer war in Europe would in turn cause a longer war in the Pacific by diverting men, ships and material to the European theater.

[ulysses]

41. that's assuming that Stalin keeps the country from revolt

after losing his namesake city. Not that he couldn't have done it, mind you. :)

[neverforget]

43. I think "The Man of Steel" would've been ruthless in any revolt.

[ulysses]

46. no doubt.

[Uncle Joe]

44. I believe the war would have dragged out longer but Germany still would have lost

as they would have been fighting a continuous guerrilla war over territory for which their population was too small to control over the long term.

[LanternWaste]

48. Same outcome-- four to six months later.

Same outcome-- four to six months later... and that's worst case scenario.

In '43, Churchill vocalized why Nazi Germany simply could not win under any circumstances-- that between the US and the USSR, Germany would be defeated by "the proper application of overwhelming might".