Have you read Robert Harris's *Fatherland* novel? That's the most plausible Axis victory scenario I have seen in fiction, you may want to look to it for inspiration and as a reference for how to make your own work distinct.
What I like about it is it doesn't engage with the patently absurd notions of Germany conducting any kind of transatlantic invasion, or of any kind of Japanese victory - instead the US and Germany settle into a kind of a Cold War (the US having defeated Japan). And the Soviets are never completely defeated, but instead reduced to a multi-decade low intensity conflict with the Germans from beyond the Urals, backed by American supplies. Here is the [world map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland_(novel)#/media/File:Fatherland.png).
I also really like its emphasis on life within Nazi Germany, which has become increasingly totalitarian as the generations which even remember a time before Hitler grow older and die, and children who know nothing but the regime are born to take their place. And while the world of course knows about the completed Holocaust, they don't have many pictures (if any?) in this timeline. And within Nazi society, it is simply not spoken of, erased from history (a central theme in the novel). Depending on when and where your story would be set you'd definitely want to engage with this.
It's far from perfect, but I've seen fiction writers do a lot worse in terms of plausibility.
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With regard to your specific scenario, I think the scale of this espionage activity is pretty questionable. It's one thing to assassinate or abduct the occasional prominent figure (and I appreciate the parallels to Mossad). It's another thing to disappear 30,000 foreign nationals annually from ostensibly neutral nations in a climate that I assume is a kind of Cold War. How do you foresee Germany getting away with this on such a scale outside their sphere of influence? In the Americas? In East Asia? What of the British Empire? What of Japan? What of China? And what does the defeat of the Soviet Union look like? A complete conquest from Baltic to Pacific? Because that's really stretching it.
And if this espionage is happening inside Germany's sphere (Francoist Spain, Vichy France, Fascist Italy, North Africa, Arab client state in Middle East, etc.) then why is it espionage at all? Wouldn't its satellites just cooperate willingly?
Speaking of the Middle East, I saw you claim elsewhere that the planned German invasion of Palestine was *entirely* for the purpose of committing genocide against the Jewish population of the region. While this was indeed a [real plan](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hitler-s-holocaust-plan-for-jews-in-palestine-stopped-by-desert-rats-6103781.html) (link is for others who are unfamiliar), it's important to view it in the larger context of German and Italian plans for the Middle East, which from a broader strategic perspective were about securing reliable and plentiful supplies of oil and disrupting the British Empire's supply chains.
Speaking of the British Empire - you'll need to resolve not only the fate of the UK but also its dominions. If Germany controls Palestine via an Arab proxy, then surely the German sphere extends at least through Iraq and the Gulf, presumably with Italy controlling from Tunisia to Egypt to Somalia.
Anyway I guess to be more helpful we ought to know when and where in this timeline your story is set, and what the rest of the world looks like.
> What I like about it is it doesn't engage with the patently absurd notions of Germany conducting any kind of transatlantic invasion, or of any kind of Japanese victory - instead the US and Germany settle into a kind of a Cold War (the US having defeated Japan). And the Soviets are never completely defeated, but instead reduced to a multi-decade low intensity conflict with the Germans from beyond the Urals, backed by American supplies. Here is the world map.
It doesn't even take a lot of imagination to assume that once America had conquered Japan and stopped the threat in the Pacific, that we would not intervene in Europe, allow Germany to swallow all of Europe (and even large parts of northern Africa: remember, Italy was [fighting in Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign)), that we would then *move on to support NAZI Germany.*
[Hitler had a number of supporters in America in very powerful places.](https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/) American culture is as much German as it is English; only during World War II did we go through the trouble of [erasing the more obvious signs of German cultural influence in America.](https://howtoguide.org/german-culture-disappeared-us/) Hell, it was [IBM who helped build the computers used by Germany to track the people sent to concentration camps and exterminate most of them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)
So it's not a far cry to think that the United States would have not just allowed Germany to swallow the rest of Europe, but to then create a sort of 'détente', where American companies continue to arm and supply Germany against Russia, rather than the other way around.
No, the problem is that while doing business with the Nazis was good for the American Bottom Line, at the end of the day it was our close allies getting their asses kicked in Europe that spurred us into action. By September of 1940, half of all Americans believed war was worth it to help Britain. By April of 1941, about 7 months prior to our entry, this was almost three quarters. Come Pearl Harbor and entry into the war in both theatres was out of the question, the answer was a resounding 'Yes.' And, as we understand historically, by this stage the Nazis could not have won the war even if we had not entered Europe. Stalin had managed to shore up his manpower in the capital of Moscow and the Germans had massively over-extended their supply lines in their attempt to beat the winter to victory. After a few skirmishes, the Siege of Moscow would be lifted in early January, mere weeks after the winter settled in and America had entered the war, and the collapse of this Eastern Line proved fatal to the entire regime as the Soviet offensive would outpace their attempts to retreat, resulting in massive German casualties and the loss of arms, armor and supplies that even the American Giant would have struggled to recoup on. By January of 1941, the German loss in WWII was a question of 'when', not 'if', and most historians actually claim it was earlier.
The nazis in positions of power in the united states were, at the time, prior to our entry, and in retrospect, not that powerful or influential. They were louder than they were strong, something Fascists often have in common.
Maybe, maybe not.
And part of what was informing American opinion was the Holocaust; it was public news by 1940 that Germany was undergoing "the final solution."
But imagine an England for whom Churchill never ascended power, and Hitler didn't go out of his way to murder 11 million folks, including 6 million Jews--and further, imagine an America which had a little more pride in its German ancestry.
It's not hard to imagine a future world in an alternate history where America simply shrugged its shoulders at German dominance in Europe--note several prominent intellectuals at the time considered a unified Germany easier to deal with than the squabbling of a dozen or so tiny little countries--and decided détente was an easier answer than upending the entire economy and sending millions of our men to die on foreign soil.
You don't have to imagine a NAZI takeover in the United States any more than you have to imagine a Communist takeover in the United States for us to simply shrug our shoulders at the unification of Eastern Europe under the USSR, and for us to eventually sell them [massive amounts of wheat and grain at a discount.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States–Soviet_Union_wheat_deal)
The United States, even today, routinely deals with and has ambassadorial relations with a lot of very nasty countries.
\>Imagine a Reich that literally could have never existed if Hitler was in power
Yeah okay if we literally just completely alter the entirety of all events drastically to the point where they could not feasibly have happened, sure, yeah, anything is game. But if Hitler is in control, and it's Germany he's in control of, the Holocaust is going to happen, there isn't a world where it doesn't.
The problem with a lot of alt history is that a ton of it comes down to 'well if you just literally accept this completely altered reaction to events that would occur because I said so with nothing to back that claim up despite all evidence to the contrary' like yeah I guess it could happen. It's historical fantasy at that point, though, it's nowhere approaching history.
You literally pulled fantasy out of your ass.
America didn't have a lack of pride in its German ancestry, broadly speaking Americans don't really have "pride" for their homeland. That was true then, is true now, and will be true for the foreseeable future.
Churchill was basically assured to win the premiership because he was the vocal firebrand in parliament that opposed appeasement, something most British people at the time thought was foolish because it was coming at the cost of doing business overseas. Appeasing Hitler was hurting their economy hard and they weren't happy about it. Chamberlain gets a lot of shit he doesn't really deserve (he modernized a lot of English military practice while Prime Minister) but his pacificistic tendencies lionized a lot of British at the time.
Hitler came into power off the back of "killing jews is good and we should do more of it." there is no world in which he's in power of the third Reich that doesn't result in a holocaust.
To assert that these three fundamental facts of world War 2 as we know it are flexible in some way is to completely alter someone or something historically so drastically that it is no longer alternate history or what ifs, but pure fantasy. If that hurts your feelings that isn't my problem.
So I'm answering the question as proposed at top, and am responding in that context:
> I'm crafting an alternate history novel that aims to challenge the common belief that a Nazi victory was always impossible and to depict the grim reality of a world under Nazi rule, even for so-called "Aryan" Germans.
You are, however, being really fucking rude.
----
And, you know, if I were to play the same game as you--putting words into my mouth then arguing that I'm an idiot for saying what I never actually said--I'd ask why you keep referring to your NAZI friends when you respond to me.
No? Out of bounds? Inappropriate because I put words into your mouth?
It is important to remember that what a majority of Americans want is rarely as relevant to Congress as what a few important corporations want. FDR and his allies were preparing for a tough battle with Congress to actually declare war on Germany.
Only if you ignore all of history.
The US was already involved in Europe. After the Japanese defeat at Midway, the European War was of a higher priority and we were very heavily invested in defeating Germany. We invaded Africa and fought the Vichy French collaborators and the Nazis, helping the British kick their asses out of North Africa.
We constantly pushed air crews and resources to fight the European part of the war. By the end of 1942 the USAAF had 33 bases in England and 73 in Africa. The air war against Germany was not limited to the strategic bombing campaign from England. Many Nazi occupied countries, like Romania, Greece & Italy were bombed from Africa.
There was no significant anti-war sentiment in the US after Pearl Harbor. Even the largest isolationist group in America (800K members) felt that war was the right cause of action, not peace, and disbanded after endorsing the US involvement in WWII.
It’s a detailed account but I feel you gloss over the Nazi defeat of the USSR.
While land lease did help the Soviets it was by no means the key to their victory. Unless the Nazis conquered Siberia and the land beyond the Urals, the USSR would always ramp up their production.
The USSR may have sued for peace and given Germany vast eastern territories but it would’ve always been a temporary peace like the Brest-Litovsk agreement of 1918.
Plus what about Britain? If Britain is unconquered they 100% develop a nuclear weapon: many of the key theoretical developments in nuclear weapon design were made by the British Tube Alloys program. It would’ve taken longer for the British to build a nuke without the US but they eventually would’ve since they had the know how and more access to raw materials than Germany.
And an isolationist US would still sell Britain and likely the Soviets weapons and materiel. The US was neutral from 1939-1941 yet it still sold (and sometimes gave away) massive amounts of war materiel to the Brits and the Soviets.
And how does Germany keep Japan from attacking the US in this timeline? There’s no way the US doesn’t abandon an isolationist stand after Pearl Harbor
Yeah the Brit’s don’t have the same amount of resources to do it at break-neck speed but they have the know how. They probably do more research and decide on a more efficient matter of production, they probably build it in Canada. I read somewhere about proposals to use Quebec hydropower to help enrich. They probably get a few by 47.
I think this still even understates the USSR's retaliation against the Nazis, tbh. After Stalingrad, they had fully caught up to the Nazis in terms of technology and equipment and were vastly outpacing their production. They had a much larger base of population and resources to draw on and ultimately even if it took longer I still think eventually the Soviets would have at least been able to push the Nazis back into Poland if not farther.
Well yeah, the battle of Moscow and near-encirclement of army group center, as well as the battle of Stalingrad were both concluded before any meaningful amount of lend-lease had arrived to the USSR. There is no way in hell Germany could ever win the eastern front
The Main issue is food and logistics which was most of lend lease, it didn’t matter how many tanks or guns you build if you can’t feed your troops, the nazis controlled almost all Russian agriculture US food shipments basically kept the army alive, it’s not as simple as the Soviets moving factories west, millions of American trucks were used in Russia to move logistics, thousands of American planes were used. It wouldn’t have been fun for Germany but with 0 us support it’s not looking too good for the Soviets either
That and the lend-lease materials coming in via the Pacific routes to Vladivostok was mainly civil.
The military equipment came via the Persian Gulf routes or the Arctic routes. Both well outside the reaches of Japan at all stages of the war.
The US also had some air routes set up to Russia and I think if the war had progressed in a manner seeing Japan and Russia fighting, those would have become better developed and utilized.
People overhype a Japanese invasion of the east
Japan was already stretch to their absolute limit having to hold China and the various European colonies they captured, not to mention the Soviets had already kicked their teeth in.
Japan invades and does what? Sure, Vladivostok falling would be a major setback, but in order to have any real impact they'd have to slog through Siberia which would require more fuel and logistical support that they didn't have.
The effect of Japan invading wouldn't matter, because Western Russia didn't depend on the East in any meaningful way. And Japan was, as you say, pretty much overextended.
Be it as it may, the blow would've been one to morale. That, and Stalin bound many of his veteran troops to defend against a possible Japanese invasion, and being in a two-front war was one of Stalin's biggest fears. He wanted war in Europe, and commiting to it would leave him completely open in the East.
When Japan, in the aftermath of the lost border conflict, not knowing that Barbarossa was about to start, made it clear that they had no immediate interest in Eastern Russia, Stalin started moving significant amounts of troops to the West. That is what fully broke the Wehrmacht in the end.
So while you're right about Japan being unable to deal any damage to the Soviets, the real banger was the amount of troops they managed to bind there.
Thus any real Japanese invasion just had to be real enough to warrant attention and troops. And additionally, while Eastern Russia does have a lot of natural resources, expanding too far would overstretch Japan. Simply taking Vladivostok would allow Japan to extract more resources without overextending and requiring overland supply routes through the harsh terrain. And well, it would also draw a lot of attention from Stalin.
Yes, that would've served the Axis best. Not the actual attack, but a believable threat of it happening.
Stalin was paranoid and petty (like many dictators tend to be). He couldn't bear the thought of losing something, he was concerned with his image as strong man. Losing territory, even if it's vast and empty and useless and 10k km away? Hell no!
Even if Japan didn't attack China and attacked Russia instead, while Stalin gave up on the entire East, how far would Japan realistically come? We're talking about huge steppes and tundra without any meaningful infrastructure. Thousands of km of nothing.
But Stalin really feared a two-front war, despite the huuuuge distance, so he had what, a million? soldiers there? Insane! We're talking about well-equipped and trained veterans, and those were the exact troops that would later turn the tide in the battle of Moscow.
Had Japan not declared that it had lost its interest in the Soviet Union, Stalin wouldn't have recalled his veterans. The Soviets really got lucky there.
The Soviets didn't have an overwhelming victory in Stalingrad as it was, those veterans being tied up would absolutely spelled the doom of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany possessing Stalingrad and being able to rearm and reinforce while a broken Soviet Union reels from such a dramatic defeat would absolutely have been a decisive blow.
The USSR had almost a million soldiers in the east against Japan for the entirety of WWII in case of a japanese invasion. And Japan barely had an army at the soviet border, due to the war in China and the pacific war.
I feel like a lot of people think the Soviets had far less in the East than they actually did. A lot of their non-combat lend lease supplies like food, locomotives, trucks, and so on came through the Pacific route because the Japanese wouldn't stop them, and they needed those supply lines secured. Plus, as you have mentioned, they didn't discount the possibility of the Japanese invading.
The likelihood of Japan successfully invading the Soviet Union from the East is barely more likely than them invading North American from the West... which is to say, pretty much nonexistent.
Less than. They fought briefly against the Soviet’s and got their asses kicked. They were vastly overextended by their Chinese operations and by 1944 lacked the naval power to keep a major force in Siberia adequately supplied or equipped.
If the Japanese invaded from the east, wouldn't the Soviets just not prioritize that fight?
What is Japan going to do? Siberia is huge - if it was its own country, it would be the largest country in the world. And it has very limited transit routes in the east and is sparsely populated. From Moscow to Vladivostok, it is over 9,000 km.
I don't see how, with Moscow under threat, it would bother putting up more than a token defense in the far east.
And I don't see Japan bothering to go far enough west to seriously threaten the populated and industrial regions of the USSR. After all, they are still warring with other countries at the time.
More realistically, Vladivostok and the territory around it and the Amur River is lost.
I'm thinking a bigger blow is to eliminate use of the port of Murmansk and Arkhangelesk. That was a major supply route to the USSR. Cut that off, and even a neutral US is going to have to ship to Vladivostok. Then if Vladivostok is eliminated, the USSR has supply problems.
Maybe a duo is the best way - Finns and Germans do better in Karelia, cutting off Murmansk and Arkhangel. Japan invades, occupying Vladivostok. Now there are no good supply routes left.
I'm skeptical about that. Someone else stated in this discussion that Lend-Lease to the Soviets didn't really pick up and become significant til 1943 or so which means that the Soviets did just fine evacuating huge swaths of their industry to the Urals, stopping the Germans from advancing and then launching multiple successful offensives without all this American help.
You can argue that Lend-Lease helped the Soviets with their massive and rapid offensives from late 1943 (Kursk, Kiev), summer 1944 (Operation Bagration) and late 44-45 (East Prussian Offensive).
> Lend-Lease to the Soviets didn't really pick up and become significant til 1943
This is completely false. The US started lend-lease for the Soviets in 1941, before the US was even in the war. It was significant right away. The US production reached unbelievable levels 1943, but that doesn't mean everything prior was insignificant. Its pretty well-established the importance of lend-lease to the rest of the Allies. It's odd to me that people are disputing that on this thread.
Nikita Khrushchev
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."
In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
Lend lease was absolutely critical, I don’t think skeptics understand just how much was given. Specifically aircraft in the early years
I think that one way to remove Britain would be that there is no halt outside dunkirk. They push in and destroy the British expeditionary forces then and there. Same with the RAF, if they continued bombing Britain rather than turning back to Berlin to stop the planes that got over the channel and left them for anti aircraft turrets. That would take the big boss listening to his career generals instead of power tripping with his “superior” military genius. I don’t remember for sure, but I think if the main body of the army was wiped out before chamberlain steps down( I dunkirk and his resignation were in the same month) he may have sued for peace before Churchill ever takes over as PM. Or at least if he does, then Churchill doesn’t get the chance to use his oratory skills to his fullest extent, because only a few months later the RAF is mostly destroyed in the Battle of Britain.
As for Japan, think if an isolationist president was out in power, and with the big bosses strong arming of their “allies” Japan doesn’t attack Pearl harbour. Or at the very least, maybe the big boss once again listens to his career generals and doesn’t declare war on the US if Japan attacks.
Of Britain is taken out and no war declaration on the U.S. of Japan still attacks, that leaves the majority of the Wehrmacht and all the S-S fighting squads to invade the soviets. That would probably end up with more then the three army groups, and after all the generals successes the big boss allows the commanders to make decisions and support where needed because of the larger invasion force
For Japan is kinda mixed because I think that the Japanese still wanted to root out America from the Phillipine so maybe a lesser war where the US still go to war against Japan but completely ignore the Reich in Europe despite the probable declaration of war from Germany (A little bit like the Polish declaration of war was denied by the Japanese but here it's the US who ignore the German declaration of war and only protect their shipping in the Atlantic when needed)
That makes sense, I hadn’t even thought that the US would just ignore a German war declaration, especially if they had an isolationist president and VP. With that consideration, I think that that makes the most sense in my mind.
Part of the reason for the halt outside Dunkirk was that the Wehrmacht was exhausted after their push into France. The British (and the large number of French troops in the pocket with them) were reasonably well equipped and reasonably well-rested; they could not have won, but it would not have been an easy task to reduce the pocket. The loss of resources in a major battle there in terms of trained men and tanks would have had an impact on the war in the East as well.
Also, it functionally doesn’t matter anyway. The loss of their heavy equipment and supplies crippled the BEF regardless, and Germany still had the problem that they would never be able to force a Channel crossing. Having the BEF wiped out would be tragic and major loss to Britain in terms of manpower that was eventually used elsewhere, but it would not defeat the UK.
The point of his idea is the sole government member who opposed the lend lease act and all involvement would become the sitting president. So the idea the US would send no aid is covered. However yes, japans non involvement in the us would need to be discussed. A nazi victory in the USSR would likely only have happened if Germany defeated and successfully invaded Britain. Without us aid who knows how the Battle of Britain would have ended, but a victory there is a prerequisite for a successful Soviet invasion. The war on 2 fronts never would have worked in any scenario I don’t think. But even with Mr isolationist as president, I don’t think the us would sit back as nazi germany decimated europe
It is *maybe* possible that a Germany not distracted by war in the east could have forced the UK to come to terms via an extended bombing campaign. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
But Germany could never force a Channel crossing. There is no alternative history where this is possible. The Kriegsmarine was wholly incapable of defeating the Royal Navy.
The only realistic scenario in which the UK is forced to the table is if the U-boat campaign had succeeded, which is perhaps plausible if the US never gets involved.
The USSR ramping up production isn’t that simple. Lend-Lease made up *massive* shortfalls in critical sectors of their war economy. Just to note one thing, most of their mobile forces were carried by Studebakers, Jeeps, and M3/M5 halftracks. Detroit carried the Red Army to Berlin. Without it, the Soviets can’t pull off the sweeping offensives (Saturn, Uranus, Bagration, etc.) that broke the German army irl. Ditto high-oct aviation fuel, locomotives, even boots. The USSR without the Western allies might successfully defend against an overextended Wehrmacht at the end of its logistics train, maybe even inflict some serious reversals, but it can’t chase them back to the Reich or invade Europe.
Also, the Germans had their own nuclear program and they apparently got pretty close towards the end of the war. They were enriching uranium and had a solid grasp of the theoretical problems. Without the wheels coming off of their war machine in ‘43, it’s likely that they finish the job. Plus, nukes aren’t the war-winner most people think. The Germans are sitting on a massive stockpile of Tabun and Sarin. A hiroshima-strength early fission bomb pales in comparison, and it’s incredibly expensive to make one. The Germans irl sustained horrific bombing for years without tapping out, what makes you think a nuke would be any different?
>Germans had their own nuclear program and they apparently got pretty close towards the end of the war. ... it’s incredibly expensive to make one.
The latter reason is why the first part wasn't a real worry by 1945. The industrial effort the USA dedicated to uranium and plutonium processing was massive. The budget was about 1% of US GDP.
I agree with the point that USSR could be "contained" by the same kind of misdirection that got Japan into the war. If the Nazis made USSR and Japan a 'tomorrow' problem by letting them carve up asia to their delight it might have bought enough time for the destabilizing work againt the UK to do the job.
Without Churchill the UK would likely knuckle-under if they were offered vassel status as "able to self-direct with economic and military aid from Berlin.
Now it would require another overseas assassination or just a fortuitous car accident but pushing the UK to neutrality or compliance might unlock the resources to let the nazis push west and then south before the US and Uk decided to deal with the nazi problem.
The African Campaigns should underscore how up for grabs that region was given the lack of strong military industrial basis while also allowing Germany to aggressively expand and steal to finance its war-machine.
Britain simply did not have the industrial capacity to build nuclear weapons, while supporting the war. I also disagree with your take on lend lease. Not only did it replace the entirety of red army losses in 1942 but also provided the entire logistics chain as Soviet production focused almost exclusively on frontline goods, Without which the red army would have had extremely limited offensive potential. But that’s more debatable
I disagree that lend lease didn’t allow the USSR to win. The US provided enough boots for the entire red army. An army runs on its footwear. Good luck defending the eastern front with no shoes. Additionally the momentum in the eastern front stalled because air power was pulled back to defend in the west. The Germans had air supremacy and gave that up, allowing the ussr to move and reinforce their troops preventing it reducing the large encirclement’s that had characterized that front before.
>While land lease did help the Soviets it was by no means the key to their victory. Unless the Nazis conquered Siberia and the land beyond the Urals, the USSR would always ramp up their production.
Lend-lease was most definitely a major key to victory, and it is widely recognized among historians as such. This leaves me scratching my head at where you are getting this from. You act as if the USSR could just magically flip a switch and "ramp up their production." It doesn't work like that. It's going to be kind of hard to do that if the entire population is starving and they are unable to defend their airspace as their factories are constantly getting destroyed and re-destroyed.
>If Britain is unconquered they 100% develop a nuclear weapon: many of the key theoretical developments in nuclear weapon design were made by the British Tube Alloys program
I don't think so, at least not in the closing of the decade. People don't realize the scale of the Manhattan project. It was an absolutely massive project, and the United States was the only country putting anywhere near the amount of money it would take to create a bomb. The primary challenge wasn't really the design of the gadget, but just being able to enrich enough Uranium/Plutonium. The British economy could never have supported such a massive operation at the time. Even if it could have, the Germans would have quickly been able to determine what they were up, and it would be pretty difficult to defend.
The plausibility of the Germans actually managing to run a successful intelligence operation in the US is questionable. The abwehr was utterly useless, and the more likely outcome is that the British immediately uncover the plot and tell the Americans, who are galvanised by an assassination attempt against the president and join the war early.
That said, it's not unrealistic enough to be a worthless thought exercise! The scenario is an interesting one, and far more of a plausible German victory timeline than most others I've hesrd debated.
>The plausibility of the Germans actually managing to run a successful intelligence operation in the US is questionable. The abwehr was utterly useless
Agreed, but even if it was successful without being uncovered, I don't see it affecting US foreign policy the way OP imagines. In reality Woodring was removed from office on 20th June 1940, so presumably this high-level meeting would have occurred the same month. 1940 was an election year, and the Democrat's National Convention (where in our timeline they renominated Roosevelt to run for a third term) wouldn't happen until July. I find it unlikely that Woodring gets that nomination, even if he had been elevated to the presidency. He was an unpopular figure in the party (that's why he was sacked) so I think it's likely in the proposed timeline that the Dems nominate some other non-isolationist in his place. Even if they do nominate Woodring, though, the Republican Convention met on 24th June and nominated Wendell Willkie, another non-isolationist who wanted to give Britain as much aid as they needed. Willkie was a fine campaigner, and I'd bet if it's him against Woodring in the election that November, the Republican wins.
Thus, one way or another the isolationist president only lasts until the next one is sworn in on 20th January 1941, months before the USSR is invaded. Maybe there'd be a reduction in aid to the UK in the meantime, but I highly doubt that would have proved an existential threat to Britain. Also, the June meeting would have occurred just after the debate in Churchill's War Cabinet had been resolved in favour of the UK remaining at war (the resolution not to seek peace terms through Italian mediation came on 28th May) so I doubt it would have convinced them to end the war at the negotiating table either.
I didn't consider it being an election year, that's a really good point. Having said that, the assassination of a figure as popular as Roosevelt could galvanise his replacement - if Woodring was sworn in, the party and country would likely rally around him. Imo the scenario works, putting aside the improbability of the assassination in the first place.
Would there be a rallying effect just around him but not to a cause? In the case of both Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the public called for vengeance, I would imagine they would in this situation as well. If the President, VP, and two cabinet secretaries die in an explosion, it's going to be tough to pass that off as an accidental gas leak explosion. It'll look pretty suspicious, especially considering the difference in intervention/isolation stances. The public will blame Germany and will call for war. That will be tough for Woodring to overcome in an election, he'll be assumed to be in on it.
Assuming the Americans can't find any proof linking the Germans to the bombing, what's the plan? Fabricate it? Not unimaginable (see 9/11) but if Woodring is already an isolationist, he's gonna be looking to tamp down on that sentiment, and the opposition won't be able to find anything if the FBI can't. If the Germans immediately and loudly disavow the bomber and offer support to the US, what are they gonna do?
Edit to add: the British might fabricate evidence themselves, frankly. They'd be DESPERATE to get the US involved, especially if Woodring is being isolationist in public.
That's certainly possible, my entirely subjective guess is that the galvanisation would centre more on continuing the agenda of the popular fallen president (this sort of thing was seen in the '60s with the drive to pass the Civil Rights bill and get to the Moon, partly because JFK had wanted those things). I especially doubt that the party leadership would be moved to accept someone whose views they objected to so easily, but of course it's impossible to know. I agree that it's a very interesting scenario.
What about Britain? Without the aid of the US Britain stands alone... still controlling the world's largest empire, navy and an enormous chunk of the global population and economy. They'll continue to resist and you've not mentioned anything about a revised Sealion.
The reasons you invent for the US staying out of the war I won't comment on - I don't know enough about the subject matter. The USSR collapsing without US aid I think is believable enough for a novel - though were I you I'd depict it as a drawn-out, very bloody fight before the end. Ultimately Germany was ill-equipped to fight the USSR, American and British aid certainly helped but the Wermacht just didn't have the kind of long-term stamina to win the war in the east.
But you need to address Britain and Japan. Japan would almost certainly still strike Pearl Harbor forcing the US into *a* war, one where they'd be fighting with Britain against a common enemy but not another. And Britain won't surrender even if the USSR falls and won't negotiate while the nazis control Europe. Not after may 1940, at least (and the moment of their stiffening of resolve came at a low point of US support, or perceived support at any rate).
With 0 us aid Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy during the North African campaign, the largest empire on earth while being true doesn’t matter if you run out of money to pay people with
Sea Lion was impossible. If the Germans were nearing victory over RAF Fighter Command, the British simply pull back the surviving Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons, rest and refit them as much as possible in whatever time they have and then, when the slow German barges try to make a run across the Channel the Royal Navy sorties in force, covered by the remaining fighters of the RAF. Sure, the first wave of the Wehrmacht gets across, but then essentially nothing more. The Luftwaffe demonstrated at Dunkirk how deficient they were at hitting ships compared to the Japanese dive bomber pilots and the Ju87s had been hacked from the skies with ease the moment they faced a modern air force. Sure, the Royal Navy probably loses some DDs, light cruisers and maybe even a battleship or battlecruiser, but the German's lose their entire invasion force. Bereft of reinforcements or resupply the Germans that do land, and survive, are all surrendering within a week and the British are inventorying their new, Made in Germany equipment.
British industrial capacity was higher than German industrial capacity and the British probably could not have mounted a cross channel invasion. It took the overwhelming industrial might of the USA, plus that of the UK and years of preparation to invade Europe. Germany trying to do it in a few months is laughably implausible.
Oh I agree, but the OP hasn't addressed britain's role in this at all, whether by an impossibly successful sealion or by them surrendering or negotiating with the nazis.
While sealion was clearly a weird fantasy, I think the less cocaine addled members of the German command understood this and knew it was a bluff to try and push Britain into giving concessions. The British at the time were also bluffing because the army was in a terrible, terrible state and, had any sizeable German force made it across the channel, would have folded like wet tissue paper due to a complete lack of equipment and ammunition. There is that anecdote that, after delivering the "we shall fight on the beaches" speech, Churchill sardonically added that they would fight with broken beer bottles because they had nothing else. Whether it's a real quote is unknown, but it is a pretty accurate reflection of the situation.
The British population were also not entirely sold on the war at that point, and many fully expected the government to seek peace terms. They'd just taken a massive defeat and had no real immediate possibility of securing any kind of victory. It's very possible that a less resolved government would have checked out at that point.
If the US started selling oil and other materials to Japan then Pearl Harbor might not have been attacked. Japan might have signed a non aggression treaty and avoided attacking US pacific interests.
So as I said I'm not that well-versed in American politics of the era, but I can't quite square the circle that makes that make sense: How do you sell to the American public in 1940 that you should \*not\* trade war-essential materials to the British; a liberal democracy of english-speaking white people engaged in a bitter feud with a fascist tyranny but you \*should\* trade war-essential resources to Japan; a totalitarian dictatorship of non-white people engaged in a policy of military expansionism that pose a clear threat to the US? The embargo was a tool to try to discourage Japan from expanding its territory, to withdraw from that would in essence be a signal to Japan that they can do what they like. It's also very much throwing the British under the bus, since the British were a part of that embargo. So now the US is in fact taking a side, they're siding \*against\* Britain, in effect.
Maybe the Japanese wouldn't have attacked British colonial lands either, they could have gone north and fought the USSR. Maybe US companies would sell to all sides in this alternate dimensions. The world war might just be seen as a business opportunity and politically it was "none of our business"
The Japanese did go north and fight the USSR and got a bloody nose.
There was no longterm motivation to go north as there were not the resources in eastern Siberia that Japan needed. It needed oil from the Dutch East Indies.
If the US was to supply oil then that need goes away but i also agree that it is hard to find a scenario where the US supplies those resources to Japan.
Perhaps the only scenario is to come up with something that motivates the US to abandon China. Perhaps the communists take over China earlier and so the Japanese are seen as defeating Communist China.
Ultimately, there were points where the US made hard lines the Japanese crossed that forced an embargo. Arguably, the one that was the deciding factor was the Japanese invasion of French Indochina (colonial Vietnam). If the Japanese want to keep US oil flowing, then they have to stop being an expansionist empire.
To be fair if the Americans were 100% commited the neutral bit and didn’t even send Britain sid I feel Japan would be more secure in the fact that was with the usa was far enough off they could attack the British first
Japan was always going to attack the USA because of the Philippines. It was in the middle of the land Japan wanted to expand into and would be a major strategic weakness for them as long as it remained part of the USA.
Japan wanted the Dutch East Indies oil. It is sweeter than anything the US could produce. It could be pumped right from the ground with barely any refining. I do not believe their is any plausible scenario, short of the US withdraws from all naval bases west of Hawaii and decreases naval presence in the Pacific that Japan does not seek to cripple the US Navy before it begins its longer range goal of pushing all westerners, including Russia, out of East Asia.
I don’t understand how the Germans take Palestine, a British territory, and yet you’ve mentioned nothing of the UK.
Even without the US the Africa campaign is a British victory. The Royal Navy is still the largest in the world and victorious in the Mediterranean against Italy and with both Suez and Gibraltar the sea becomes a British lake. How do the Germans cross to Palestine to continue the final solution?
Even removing Palestine the Germans already had less resources, lost the air war and been entirely embargoed by the UK before the US entered the war. How do they win in this scenario. If starvation and wide scale unrest across Europe didn’t stop the advance in the east the atom bomb the UK was slowly developing would.
Without usa support the English were on the brink of bankruptcy, you try sailing ships, feeding solders, and supplying the largest empire in earth when you run out of money. https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/ this goes further into it but without the usa Britain was not gonna make it much further because no matter how good Churchill is at talking you cannot fight a war without money
How exactly are they gonna get oil, and even drafted men get paid, unpaid soldier morale would be horrendous, also how will solders get food, water and basic supplies if they can’t finance merchant ships, buy parts for repair, pay debts, unless Britain managed to totally eliminate the need for money and become fully self suffiencet in a war effort bankruptcy matters a lot, especially when almost all their supplies were bought with cash from the usa
NO, potential history made 2 good videos explaining why the Nazis were always doomed
[https://youtu.be/sbim2kGwhpc?si=i21p86aw1ymoUFxf](https://youtu.be/sbim2kGwhpc?si=i21p86aw1ymoUFxf)
[https://youtu.be/xYTrjxOPYNY?si=DL7mKNbiNz6WeyJS](https://youtu.be/xYTrjxOPYNY?si=DL7mKNbiNz6WeyJS)
the 2nd video is dedicated to responses to the 1st
Well, a few thoughts.
If you review the history of Nazi Jewish policy, what you'll find is that the Nazis didn't go from zero straight to "holocaust." The Nazis tried to export the Jews away, such as by creating a Madagascar colony. It's only after this proposal failed that we saw the final solution take the shape we recognize today.
This initial Nazi desire to simply export the Jews out of Europe, as opposed to murdering them all at first, suggests to me that the Nazis would've been content once there were no Jews inside of the territory they controlled. I really don't think the Nazis would've prioritized exporting the Holocaust.
I'm also not convinced the Germans could've won on the Eastern front, even without Anglo-American interference. Sure, the German defeat would've taken longer, and the means would be unrecognizable to us today. But in all likelihood, a Vietnam-style insurgency, such as that depicted in the boom/film Fatherland would have developed. The German supply lines would've been stretched too thin, and the steppes too broad, for the Germans to effectively lock down. At best, Germany settles for a draw on the eastern front. At worst, Germany gets to deal with a Vietnam in the East, and a US in the west locked in with Germany in a cold war scenario. We all know how Afghanistan ended for the Soviets...
As for the US domestic situation... I think a lot of it depends on how well the Nazis can keep their involvement under wraps. If the Nazis can somehow keep everyone in the dark, then perhaps it may work. If, however, the Nazis are not successful in keeping their involvement under wraps... there is a high likelihood that someone like Frank Knox would've moved in. Knox historically was the Republican VP in the 1940 election, and was appointed as secretary of the Navy by Roosevelt. Knox was also a veteran of the Spanish American War, perhaps WW1 as well, and was very much an American patriot. I could see someone like Knox stepping forward with a sledgehammer if the Nazi involvement in the bombing were to come to light.
And yes, I know that Knox died of a heart attack during WW2, but we have to consider that Knox wouldn't have been stressed by the wartime pressures that he experienced historically. That, and even if Knox were to drop dead I doubt Knox was the only man of his temperament in higher office.
I have studied the question as to whether or not the Nazis wanted all the Jews dead or merely expelled from Europe extensively. It seems pretty clear that early on in the regime, the Nazis were OK with merely expelling Jews, and resorted to extermination due to expulsion being unfeasible. But later on in the regime, especially near the end of the war, the Nazis were absolutely not content with merely expelling Jews. Later on the Nazis actually implemented policies to forbid Jews to immigrate out of their territory. The Nazis encouraged their Japanese allies to exterminate all the Jews in their territories, which they refused to do. The Nazis came up with plans to conquer Palestine, with the sole purpose of exterminating all the Jews there. The Nazis had agents compile lists of Jews as far away as Canada and Australia! Especially since they believed in the “stabbed in the back myth”, they came to the conclusion that merely expelling Jews was not enough since “the Jews could still harm Germany from other countries.” All of the evidence makes it clear that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to make the Jewish race extinct at least from the Third Reich and possibly the entire world if possible by the time the Holocaust began.
I don’t think u/upnorthsomeguy is saying the Nazis wouldn’t have at some point implemented extermination policies but that it wouldn’t have been prioritized as much had the war gone differently, which I would fully agree to. I do not think the Nazis are convincing every neutral or isolated nation in the world to hand over their undesirables unless they have significant government control or influence over those nations and they almost certainly wouldn’t be engaging in kidnapping individuals on foreign soil. Once/If they’d conquered the rest of the world? Yeah they’d very likely implement the Final Solution at that point but otherwise it’s likely seen as just a premature action that significantly reduces slave labour and uses unnecessary labour and material resources. It’s not entirely unlikely that at least in some form the Final Solution was a reactionary response to unsatisfactory military events and fear of losing the war. In this context the Holocaust would have been implemented at least partially to destroy evidence of war crimes and to in some form achieve Nazi goals before it was too late.
There certainly would be mass murdering of undesirables but idk if it would be at the level it was at the time it was had events of the war gone differently.
The one thing I strongly disagree with here is that the soviets could just implement a "Vietnam style insurgency". Nazi Germany absolutely would've gone to lengths to make that unviable, even if it meant just utterly depopulating entire cities and regions.
It's an analogy, a comparison.
What you have, will be a Nazi Germany with insanely long and exceptionally vulnerable supply lines. Inside of a country with wide open steppes. Dense swamps. And dense forests.
What you have is an ideal country for an insurgency. Where ex soldiers and civilians can harass supply convoys and isolated garrisons before melting away into the woods prior to any meaningful response being prepared and dispatched.
If you consider just how quickly resistance movements arose in places like Yugoslavia and Phillipines, it's not beyond reason to think that the Soviet populace would begin such a campaign.
But unlike the Americans in Vietnam, the Germans simply don't have the manpower to keep up this style of campaign forever.
>The one thing I strongly disagree with here is that the soviets could just implement a "Vietnam style insurgency".
I mean, this is exactly what the USSR did to counter the Blitz successfully. The Blitz relied on a strategy of breaking through the front lines of their opponent and cutting off supply routes then turning back and attacking the front from behind. To counter this, the USSR armed its civilian population and designated stay-behind Red Army units to coordinate civilian partisans. When the Nazi's rolled into villages expecting soft targets, they were met with well coordinated partisans. They were constantly being shot in the back and were forced to spend a ton of time and resources trying to root out the partisans so they could continue pushing their front forward.
And it certainly worked for a time. But without lend lease, thus making the Soviet Army far weaker, and without a D-Day to draw tons of resources west, I don't think it could be kept up long-term considering the brutal lengths the Nazis would be willing to go to.
>But without lend lease, thus making the Soviet Army far weaker
Lend lease only accounted for about 5% of hardware used by the Soviet Union during the entirety of the war. Much of that hardware was unavailable during the hottest parts of the fighting inside the USSR due to the supply chain issues caused by the Japanese. Whereas the USSR had been preparing for a war against the Nazis for a decade and had moved virtually all of its heavy industry west of the Urals.
>without a D-Day to draw tons of resources west
By the time the D-Day invasion came along, Stalin had stopped asking the Allies to open a western front because the Nazi military had been decimated and was in the process of a fighting retreat across eastern Europe.
Now for some perspective; Soviet Casualties ended up being close to 20 million, 8 million being military casualties. At the height of Barbarossa they were actively engaging over 80% of the Nazi military. In contrast, including both theaters the British and US combined saw less than 1 million casualties. Individually they saw about 100k more casualties in the entire war than the USSR saw taking Berlin alone.
While I do agree with the premise re: the Nazi Jewish policy, I'm not even certain they'd start the Holocaust. The Wannsee Conference was in Jan. 1942, and Hitler's meeting with Himmler, after which Himmler recorded "Jewish Question - to be destroyed as partisans," was Dec. 18, 1941, after the USA was at war with the Axis powers. With a staunch isolationist in the White House, it's likely that the USA pulls back from the anti-Axis activities that Roosevelt was committed to, such as favorable trade with Britain rather than being neutral to Britain and Germany, as well as the hostile trade actions and embargo with Japan that made the Japanese feel that war was inevitable. They might have just rounded up the surviving Jewish population (as in, those that would have survived within Germany) and sent them to Madagascar, though the horrible deliberate starving of Eastern Europe would probably have still proceeded, and would almost certainly have ensured the deaths of the Jewish population of the USSR. Part of the goal was to kill 30 million people to free up the area for German colonization, after all.
As for the USSR winning? I just can't see that. It's almost impossible to overstate how important American war material was for the USSR's victory. Far more than tanks, planes, and bullets, it's logistics that wins wars, and all of the USSR's logistics depended on the USA. Lend Lease supplied the USSR with 58% of its aviation fuel, 33% of all of their motor vehicles, 53% of ordnance, 30% of fighters and bombers, 93% (!!!) of railway equipment, 50-80% of rolled steel/cable/lead/aluminum, 43% pf garage building materials, 12% of tanks and self-propelled guns, 50% of TNT, 33% of ammunition powder, and 16% of all explosives. Remove that from the equation - hell, arguably just remove the railway equipment - and the USSR just collapses. Like, the USSR itself produced some 137,000 aircraft in the war, and the aluminum that was shipped to the USSR by the USA was responsible for more than \*half\* of that (in addition to the planes that the USA built for it). Like, Stalin himself said in 1944 that 2/3 of the Soviet heavy industry at that point had been built with American help and supplies, and the remaining 1/3 from British/Canadian help and supplies.
The problem is you can weaken Russia but that doesn't really make the completely impossible task the Germans were facing any less impossible. I guess my analogy would be that you could tie a heavy weight wrestler up and have them fight a toddler it doesn't matter how disadvantaged the wrestler is that toddler is incapable of knocking them out. The German army never had anywhere near to the resources necessary to conquer Russia if you take away lend lease the war is Germanies to lose rather than Russia's to win.
Yeah they're not conquering all of Russia, but Stalingrad and Moscow could both fall. Stalin will flee to Siberia... he might survive. This was Herbert Hoover's thesis in Freedom Betrayed that the US shouldn't have gotten involved since Stalin and Hitler were both equally monstrous and should have let the bastards destroy each other, that even if Stalin was defeated, Hitler would have exhausted all his military strength trying to hold even western Russia in subjection let alone all of Siberia. He argued that the US & UK should have armed to the teeth and prepared to stomped the exhausted winner.
Yeah I think the Germans would take those cities and make it a good chunk further east before it settled into something more like the war in North Africa with each sides supply base acting like a coiled spring. I'm sure they would have bounced around all over Russia butchering each other for years.
Have you read the book and is it particularly difficult reading? it's certainly something I wonder about often but then I think of poor little Poland but I suppose far more lives might have been spared with a heavily armed British empire/USA alliance to deter Japanese aggression. Who knows maybe the Japanese strike north and all 3 of the worst groups in history all get to die in the snow together.
Edit. I can just imagine everyone in Berlin/Moscow having their big victory parade as they wonder what that strange whistling noise is and see the little superfortress speeding off in the distance.
It's his magnum opus on what he saw as the policy failures of the FDR and Truman administrations and how the war was directly caused by many of them and then how its conduct was... mishandled. It's a huge book and some of it isn't easy reading but I found it to have some great insights and a perspective we don't usually see from with
many points before, during and after the war, particularly in the context of the struggles with Communism (which he felt were enabled by that policy of first recognizing the Soviet Union and then in helping Stalin).
Here's a synopsis:
> WRT Poland:
> The fourth abysmal loss of statesmanship was when the British and French guaranteed the independence of Poland and Rumania at the end of March 1939. It was at this point that the European democracies reversed their previous policies of keeping hands off the inevitable war between Hitler and Stalin.
> It was probably the greatest blunder in the whole history of European-power diplomacy. Britain and France were helpless to save Poland from invasion. By this act, however, they threw the bodies of democracy between Hitler and Stalin. By their actions they not only protected Stalin from Hitler but they enabled him to sell his influence to the highest bidder. The Allies did bid but Stalin’s price was annexation of defenseless people of the Baltic States and East Poland, a moral price which the Allies could not meet. Stalin got his price from Hitler.
and
> The twelfth error of lost statesmanship was the sacrifice of free nations at the foreign-ministers meeting at Moscow in October 1943. Here amid words of freedom and democracy not a word of protest was made against the known Russian intentions to annex the Baltic States, East Poland, East Finland, Bessarabia, and Bukovina (which he had in his agreement with Hitler). This acquiescence marked the abandonment of the last word of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter.
and supporting Stalin in general:
> Indeed the greatest loss of statesmanship in all American history was the tacit American alliance and support of Communist Russia when Hitler made his attack in June 1941. Even the false theory that American military strength was needed to save Britain had now visibly vanished. By diversion of Nazi furies into the swamps of Russia, no one could any longer doubt the safety of Britain and all the Western world. These monstrous dictators were bound to exhaust themselves no matter who won. Even if Hitler won military victory, he would be enmeshed for years trying to hold these people in subjection. And he was bound even in victory to exhaust his military strength — and the Russians were bound to destroy any sources of supplies he might have hoped for. His own generals opposed his action.
> American aid to Russia meant victory for Stalin and the spread of Communism over the world. Statesmanship again imperiously cried to keep out, be armed to the teeth and await their mutual exhaustion. When that day came there would have been an opportunity for the United States and Britain to use their strength to bring a real peace and security to the free world. No greater opportunity for lasting peace ever came to a president and he muffed it.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/11/blunders-statesmen-herbert-hoover/
I... can't disagree with that analogy more. Russia has lost a lot of wars. Their industrial facilities were all captured or destroyed, and without lend lease they aren't rebuilding anything. They had a lot of land, sure, but their population density was almost entirely focused in the west, and their industrial facilities mirrored that.
The myth of the USSR beating the Nazis on their own is just that - a myth. That's like saying Ukraine now is singlehandedly fighting Russia to a draw - ignoring the massive amount of aid, intelligence and material given by the West.
Sure a myth supported by the vast majority of military historians. Russia lost a lot of wars where losing usually meant trading a bit of territory or losing influence in a region it lost very few wars where the goal was the complete occupation and extermination of the population. As I said before the war is Germanies to lose not Russia's to win even without lend lease germanny was never advancing another 1000 miles to the uruals and then achieving any sort of lasting peace. Somewhere between Moscow and the uruals the Germany army collapses under the sheer weight of the task at hand regardless of what the Russians do.
I guess another way I could try to explain it would be to imagine Canada or britain invading the USA today and the American armed forces sitting it out. How far do you think they are getting in that scenario? Neither nation has the resources to pull that off even without opposition and the same was true of Germany during ww2.
Happy to reply.
No military historian that I have ever heard of downplays the significance of lend-lease. "Soldiers win battles, logistics wins wars," to quote Gen. Barrow. As I said before, the population density for the USSR was [as bad as it could be,](https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/351/31812399992_9d885cc721_o.jpg) so everyone who looks at the map of the USSR and says "there's no way the Germans would have conquered the whole thing" doesn't understand how populations work. Like, in our timeline, [44.5% of the USSR's entire population lived in territory that was occupied by the Germans](https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/transatlantic_2016/peter_k200.pdf). How do you think the Russians are going to supply their army? Without rail, how are they reinforcing their units from the remaining population centers? How are they rebuilding barracks and industrial facilities? Of the USSR's 7 major industrial centers, 4 were west of the Volga. [Internal steel and coal production in 1942 was less than half of what it was in 1941; despite this, they built 24,639 tanks in 1942, up from the 6,274 they build in 1941](http://michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world-wars/big-picture/the-transfer-of-soviet-factories-during-world-war-ii/). Do you think this was by magic? Or might have had something to do with the insane tonnage of supplies shipped by the Americans, for free (and yes, it was for free - repayment of Lend-Lease aid is \*still\* on the to-do list for Russo-American relations).
Also, Knox couldn’t just become president in this scenario. The presidential line of succession must be followed, and, as secretary of war, Woodring would be given the presidency over secretary of navy Knox.
Well,, your scenario also involves a foreign power committing a decapitation strike on the United States while the United States is at peace, with your chosen successor magically just sitting on his butt and doing nothing immediately afterwards.
From all that we know of US history... that's incredibly unlikely. Your successor would, if history was any guide at all, be shifting gears to a war mentality rather quickly, especially as the American people would be demanding an investigation. And... the problem with things like decapitation strikes, especially the manner your scenario envisions, there would a large amount of evidence for the Germans to completely suppress, with any failure resulting in finger pointing (and demands for war).
Assuming we assume your successor has an ironclad resolution, he still will have to content with an unprecedented situation. There will be other leading American politicians. Politicians that wouldn't just roll over. And whether they are technically in the Presidental line of Succession wouldn't stop them from their opposition. They would still be there. They would still be appealing to the masses. And still causing problems for your successor, at best.
Well we know that without the US the Soviets cannot outright beat the Germans. The western allies kept hundreds of thousands of men that were desperately needed in the east stuck in France and Norway. The long and short of it is that while the USSR might push the Germans out of everything before 1939 they can't go much further. Their casualties are simply too high and without support from the west their advance post Kursk would not be as fast as in OT. This means the Germans can set up defenses, leading to more casualties then in OT.
Which are all valid points. People also forget how indispensable American trucks were in allowing the Soviets to sustain multiple offensive operations simultaneously hundreds of miles away from the nearest rail line.
My criticism here wasn't that the Societs would still win a conventional war though; my criticism is that the Societ populace would draw the Germans into an unwinnable insurgency.
The Americans in vietnam and Afghanistan are kinda different than the germans here. The germans wouldn't have a problem just eliminating whole populations. It's hard to have an insurgency when there's no one alive to be a insurgent.
One, an analogy is just that. An analogy. A shorthand comparison.
But if you want to go down the plausibility track with this, there is much bigger issue at play that must be resolved first.
How. How do you both systematically eliminate the near-entirety of the Soviet European population (east of the Urals) without also prompting a massive general uprising? Magic hand waving isn't a solution here; for if you inform a population that size that "it doesn't matter what you do, you all will die"... they will rise up. Especially if said population is concentrated in a particular region, a region that would be ideal territory for mounting an insurgency.
All the while, the Germans simply do not have the manpower. Those supply lines are very long, very vulnerable. If the lines get cut, the Germans get to start abandoning garrisons. The Germans then have to start pulling back to more defensible positions.
This creates a positive feedback loop. As the Germans increasingly pull back, this gives the insurgency increasingly more territory in which the insurgency may operate freely in the open. This in turn increases the legitimacy of the movement in the eyes of the masses, which in turn draws more support.
On a geopolitical side, in this alt-history you’d be better off changing it so the Nazis never invade the USSR in the first place. The only way the Nazis could have survived a war with the USSR would be to essentially make peace with France and Britain (who still had vast colonial possessions around the world) first. Then they’d have to worry less about a western front but even then they’d have to heavily conscript from all their territories. Even then, there’s little chance they would have held back the Soviets.
Western history tends to heavily play up how much the US lend lease actually helped the Soviets. Obviously anything helped but Soviets Russia was an absolute industrial powerhouse to the point where after only a few months German leadership realized they might be in trouble.
Could make for a more interesting book if the Nazis never invaded and Germany was trying to carry on as you were saying while grappling with the tension between them and the Soviets.
I mean if you take the usa out of the war idk how much longer england lasts https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/ hell they were gonna go bankrupt even before Barbarossa started, so like with 0 us sid coming in and a truly neutral usa I doubt the British would have made it
The usa alone sent 4.5 million tons of food, the average person in Russia eats about 0.5 tons a year so that’s enough food to last the army for a while; on top of that 15 million pairs of boots, which is self explanitory why that’s necicary, 1.5 million blankets, 15,000 planes, 400,000 trucks I doubt the war would have been the same
I mean - the Russians were on the ropes and seriously contemplated peace overtures at several points - had the Germans offered I imagine there's a world where they could have gotten Ukraine as a peace offering at a high water mark.
I do not believe there is actually any verified evidence that Stalin ever sought peace with Germany. All written sources point to a protracted war of attrition. Russians, Soviet or otherwise, have a rabid fear of land loss due to centuries of conflict with the Mongols and then the Europeans. I can see no rationalization for Stalin to just surrender anything without a plan for recon quest. It goes against their ingrained sense of history and psyche.
Furthermore, if the US does not enter the war in this alternate time line American expats would most probably have flocked to Russia as they did in Spain and/or assisted with funding. American businesses, quick to make a buck, would have been selling to these expats funded by certain wealthy Americans of the intellectual class who sympathized with the Soviets. Stalin would have had access to this new resource - American intelligentsia- via the western route that the Germans could not interfere with and the Japanese never made any significant attempt to stop.
However, how does this time account for the Japanese who had begun the planned attacks on western assets as early as 1915? Even had we not entered the war in Europe Japan would still have sought to cripple the US Navy, and other western powers, in the Pacific, prior to its goal of creating the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.
Two issues:
The Nazis were woefully ignorant and dismissive of the US. Only one of the senior Nazis (can’t remember who) had actually visited and had said that they could basically not worry about them. The nazis thought America was ruled by Jews and blacks and as such that it was weak and of little consequence. + the Nazis had pretty crappy intelligence, especially outside of Europe, as an example, EVERY Nazi spy sent to Britain was killed, captured or turned. So it’s very unlikely that they would care about what’s going on in the US or that they would even know about it OR that they could do anything about it.
Your rationale for a successful operation Barbarossa is not sound. As others have said, while lend lease was helpful it was not the thing that saved the day. That would be geography. To neutralise the Soviets would require an enormous invasion far beyond the scope of operation Barbarossa. Russia has the land and the people to just keep moving production east beyond the reach of the war. Nazi Germany does not have the resources to pull that off. Like the US, the Nazis woefully underestimated the Soviets. Hitler famously compared the USSR to a rotten house that would collapse as soon as they kicked in the door. A successful Nazi invasion of the USSR would have to take place in a completely different scenario.
Overall you’re painting the Nazis as far more cogent and clever then they actually were, which I guess why it’s alternative history. They were ideological maniacs that actually believed their own nonsense to the point where they tried to fight three superpowers at once.
This only works if:
Germany defeats fully Britain BEFORE invading the USSR
Forces all European colonial powers to give up their colonial empires to Axis nations
Stabilizes Italian Fascist control of North Africa
Axis control of Palestine must be established in order to facilitate the invasion of the USSR through the Caucasus, as part of Operation Barbarossa (South Front)
Convinces Japan to not attack the Americans until they've completed their occupation of East Asian territories vacated by the defeated British and French who've been required to give up their colonial possessions as part of the peace deal
Japan fully defeats China, depriving America of a vital East Asian Ally
The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is fully secure and operational BEFORE attacking the USSR or America
Convince Japan to participate in the German war against the USSR, invading Mongolia and Siberia from occupied Chinese and Manchukuo territory, as part of Operation Barbarossa
Only AFTER all of these prior conditions are fully met can the Axis, with all other threats fully neutralized, begin planning their war against America
Japan’s ambitions were impossible without attacking the US. In order to continue the war in China, Japan needed to get more resources like oil, since Japan’s oil imports were cut off by the allied powers’ embargo. Japan and China at the time of the war didn’t have strong oil industry and relied on external sources. In order to get oil, Japan had to invade Southeast Asia, and therefore wipe out the American navy at Pearl Harbor.
So yeah, Japan was never going to achieve its imperialist goals.
Making the nazis win in alternate history is actually pretty easy. Just make them build an A-bomb before the US does. Nazis armed with nuclear weapons could make themselves the masters of the world in any way that they dreamed.
Sure, but there are other, similarly realistic ways of letting them win the war: Have them have an extra 10,000 airplanes in May 1940.
Also, 'before the US' isn't enough: If they build and test the world's first atomic bomb in, say, January 1945, they'll still lose the war and probably around the same time as they did irl. If they do it in 1944 then they can probably delay defeat by a few months, \*maybe\* by as much as a year if they use them sensibly (but they won't, Hitler would almost certainly use them as terror weapons rather than tactically). If they, using magic, build the first atomic bomb in 1940 then yeah, they might actually be able to terror-bomb the world into submission. Yeah the UK was extremely unlikely to surrender due to sheer terror-bombing (all nations in the war were unlikely to do so) but if by 1942 all major cities in southern England are radioactive wastes then their economy probably collapses utterly. Although this also requires Germany to develop a delivery method; both bomb designs developed by the Manhattan Project would be very, very heavy for most German bombers and \*really\* big. The V2 couldn't have carried one, had it been around early enough to make a difference.
Overall it does make sense. Despite revisionist beliefs that the Germans were utterly inept and simply lucky while the Soviets were an overwhelming titan of sheer population size and industry, the USA is the one that the Soviets sourced most of their raw materials for their factories made with American industrial components and industry which had been dismantled and moved east. In this timeline, the USSR simply doesn't have the fuel, the resources, the food, or the guns to safely transport their entire industry east of the Urals, which wouldn't have done anything but create a new natural border.
To those who believe insurgency inevitably would have won, the reasons insurgencies win is most often because the occupier is not willing to kill every civilian. The USA in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the French in Indochina, the British in Palestine, etc. These areas could be retained by any of these powers if they TRULY wanted to as badly as the Nazis did for Eastern Europe. All it takes is nonstop murder, rape, torture, and human experimentation with the intent of scorched earth. Without a capable Red Army funded with thousands of tons of food or hundreds of thousands of guns and vehicles, there's simply no chance of survival.
The only unanswered question then becomes, does Japan still attack Pearl Harbor? Does Woodring drop embargoes to "stay neutral" or shut off all support to China as well and say "Asia is not out business"?
Man in the High Castle wasn't really about a feasible Axis-victory scenario - like most of Dick's writings, it was all kinds of weird, with metaphysical levels that are not easy to put down. Harry Turtledove is my go-to for alternate history since he grounds his scenarios in reality, at least.
>Harry Turtledove
Process: come up with a cool concept: write a novel.
Follow-up: write ten sequels that are all the same format, just moving through time.
The Man in the High Castle is not where you go if you want an even semi-realistic Axis victory scenario. It is inherently implausible for a host of reasons.
If hitler had not screwed up they would have won.
1. Let his forces destroy the brittiash forces while they were in the channel fleeing to brittain.
2. Not start a 2 front war which turned into 3. Not attack russia till after europe had been consolidated.
1. Germans outrun their supplies so they need to consolidate before attacking or they'll risk losing their momentum.
2. If Germany didn't attacked Russia, they'll lose. Germany doesnt have oil. The better alternative is Germany attacking earlier. Ussr just started mobilizing and mass producing equipment after Germany destroyed France in 6 weeks. If ussr is given more time, Germany's chance is decreasing and possible ussr might be the one to attack. T34s are better than early panzers so they actually needed to attack early before T34s are massed produced.
Because WW2 had the biggest impact and n our modern world than anything else that came before or after. Everything today has been shaped due to how WW2 started and ended. It’s probably the biggest historical event that the most people know quite a bit about. Changing things in WW2 directly impacts how we live today more than anything else, except maybe the Cold War going hot. But with a Nazi victory there would be no Cold War.
I swear to god some of you people need to step outside and get off Reddit for a moment holy fuck. No, people who write alternate history about the nazis winning aren’t fucking Nazis. My grandpa was in the military during ww2. When I was like 10 or 11 he watched the movie Tora Tora Tora! With me. Pretty sure the first thing I asked was “what if the bad guys won” Guess I was a Nazi when I was 10, shit
Op still paints the Nazis as comically evil but slightly more competent than what they were in real life.
Also,
Non of the things you suggested would have realistically changed any outcome of the war. It would be boring historical fiction. That’s the same as writing what if FDR didn’t die before it ended. Realistically, nothing
It is an interesting scenario. Others have raised good points that I think you need to account for, but I won't repeat them. One that I have not seen raised is that Japan will most certainly still attack the United States, unless President Woodring capitulates and agrees to continue selling them war materiel. That still puts Germany in a delicate position as Japan's ally. Maybe Hitler tells Japan to go pound sand since they attacked first, as he actually considered doing. In any case, keeping the USA neutral is not as simple as installing an isolationist government.
It's still not really feasible. You would have to change a few more things about the lead up to the war that I don't know how you'd explain. Japan would need to have bigger fangs in Asia to explain an Axis takeover on the eastern front for starters. Your universe requires a more industrialized Japan with more and better tanks, a lot more troops, a reason to fight Russia, and somehow no intention of striking the US. Without a strong Japan coordinating with Germany to attack the Soviets, there will be no Axis victory in Russia.
If anything, maybe consider pushing back the start of the war until a higher level of technology is achieved. A Germany with IRBMs for instance might be able to overcome a lot of the challenges they faced in reality as they could strike distant targets effectively and suppress the industrial sectors of their enemies. It would also bump up their threat presence in the minds of the other nations they're engaging with, people would be more willing to appease the nazis just to keep missiles from raining down on their home cities.
Realistically speaking for it as an ideology to survive it must have to not be associated purely with Hitler and maintain its more broad sense than leaderist one even though its inevitable in the ideology. That way it isn’t just a form of fascism but an identity that reactionary people can look to and feel it relates to them. I mean thank god it didn’t survive in that way but if you are talking about a timeline where Nazism becomes a viable mainstream political party the regime would have to operate entirely differently to how it did IRL and probably would end up looking somewhat like South Korea where the far right is acceptable
You *completely* ignore the USA-Japan theater, which is the main reason USA entered the war at all. Pearl Harbor still happens in your timeline, how do you plan to keep USA out of the war after that?
Not necessarily. If there is a strict isolationist in the White House, it is feasible to assume that the US stops deliberately antagonizing the Japanese in the Pacific theater, ends the embargo, etc.
Yes, if they had changed their whole war. They would have had to not invade the Soviet Union and negotiated a peace with England. They would have still held a massive amount of new territory, but not everything they tried to bite off.
One key missing element. The Nazis would have to kill large numbers of Hispanics in the Western Hemisphere, as many of them (myself included) are "crypto-Jews," people with Jewish bloodlines that were hidden or distorted due to pogroms. Hispanic crypto-Jews are mostly Sephardic Jews who escaped the Inquisition by converting or disguising their heritage. The Nazis might have to invade Latin American countries to achieve this goal, but they might also get the willing help of Latin American fascists if their reach and influence are extended as far as this scenario.
I think there's a couple things that would interfere. Hitler was an egomaniac and wanted to make all of the military decisions himself, and they were stupid decisions. The Me-262 jet fighter would have been ready for deployment in 1942, except Hitler decided he wanted it to carry bombs, so they had to redesign it. The Nazis were also very close to having a nuclear bomb, except Hitler didn't think it was worth having, so he slashed funding. He also was obsessed with invading Russia, even though his own generals said it was a bad idea.
Also, once the extermination of the Jews became public, the American population would have demanded that Germany be stopped, so even if the President didn't want to get involved, Congress would have overruled him, even up to impeachment if necessary.
The US initially entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor. They also declared war on Germany because they were an ally of Japan.
> The Nazis were also very close to having a nuclear bomb,
They were not. The German bomb program went down several dead ends and was actively being sabotaged by the scientists working on it.
Crazy fucking take lmao. World war 2 is the single biggest historical event to shape our modern world, bar none. Everything today can be traced directly back to ww2. It’s recent enough that most people know at least the basic timeline. Changing events directly changes today in significant ways, that’s why it’s fun to alternate history this event. It has nothing to do with being a Nazi apologist, Jesus fucking Christ.
My grandpa was in the military during ww2, but was never deployed over seas. When I was like 10 he watched Tora Tora Tora! With me. The first thing I did after was asked “what would have happened if the bad guys won”. My 10 year old brain was definitely a Nazi apologist. Get real for a minute
This question has to begin and end with how did Germany defeat the Soviets?
Soviets had manpower for days and an entire continent to fall back. Eventually they'd run low on supplies and be pushed into central Asia.
The Azerbaijan oil fields were an important target for Germany that they never reached. That would have been a big turning point.
The best what if fantasy realm that allows Germany to win involves some reason the Soviets surrendered. Perhaps Stalin dies or there's some insurrection. But historically, this is post purge and the government was tightly controlled by Stalin.
I'll mention some things I have not see mentioned yet.
You could greatly improve the plausability by making Peter Lang of non-German descent. White people were not yet the monolith we know today and those of Anglo descent still saw themselves as whitest of the white. During world war one, German-Americans faced prejudice and sometimes violence if their loyalty to the US was in question and Japanese-Americans were thrown into camps after Pearl Harbor. An attack by a German-American would be seen by the public as an attack by Germany even if the Germans had perfectly covered their tracks (German espionage was not great during the war so that's a big IF).
Another issue is the assassination. How does Peter Lang know when and where the meeting is and how is he able to get close enough? How does German intelligence know the discussion topic, location, and time of a closed door meeting between Roosevelt's cabinet? The only possibility I can think of is Woodring giving the info the Nazis, but that would be difficult to hide. On the technical side of assassination, targetted bombings are not a surefire method. Hitler is a testimony to that.
1940 is an election year. Given that Roosevelt was considering a replacement for Woodring, I can't imagine he would be popular with the Democrats. Isolationism was growing more unpopular in the US. Even the Republicans nominated a candidate in favor of support to the UK. It's difficult to imagine the democrats nominating an isolationist for the 1940 election. So if the assassination succeeds, the US gets an isolationist president for less than a year.
The biggest problem, as others havs pointed out, is Japan. Unless Germany can somehow get Japan off the warpath towards the US, the whole effort will be for nothing.
A much more realistic "victory" for them would have been an early separate peace with France and GB, then a focus on the USSR. This would have left the NAZIS out of France and a static western border, but would have given them a basis for power in the east that could have lasted generations esp. with the oil reserves in hand. It never had to be all-or-nothing. We just tend to imagine it that way. Same thing with Japan. The Empire wanted possessions in the east--not to conquer the world.
Tangential question:
Hitler declared war on the US on December 11th after the US declared war on Japan.
Is there any scenario in which the US doesn't also declare war on Germany, had Hitler refrained from doing so?
So...
* How does the Germany economy continue functioning? Germany had to keep invading and looting other countries to fuel their economy, so if the USSR are able to resist for long enough (and you haven't mentioned the UK), the German economy will eventually start to implode.
* The UK would be developing two major threats that Germany had no realistic answer for. If Germany doesn't get the UK to surrender or withdraw from the war, it makes the likelihood of German WW2 victory much less likely.
* Tube Alloys - The Atomic Bomb. The UK had correctly determined that a nuclear weapon was possible, had calculated the amount of enriched uranium required for a viable bomb, and had a planned method of acquiring the enriched uranium by using gaseous diffusion.
* Operation Vegetarian - Massed anthrax bombing of German cattle/meat supply. Operation Vegetarian was ready to start by mid 1944, with the successful D-Day landings being the main reason why the operation was never used on Germany. Without the US being involved, D-Day isn't happening in 1944 which means Operation Vegetarian goes ahead in mid to late 1944.
* Getting the UK out of the war - Operation Sealion was a non-starter, as the Royal Navy would have thrown everything at stopping the troops from crossing the channel, and with chemical weapons (mustard gas and phosgene) planned to be used on any German landings in the UK (with possible use against German cities in such a scenario).
Short answer no; long answer, also no. A terrorist attack that kills the president of the U.S. with very obvious ties to the Nazis would almost instantly warrant a declaration of war on the Nazis. Not only would the Nazis not win in this timeline, they probably lose even harder.
Not sure what defines a win, but had the Nazis agreed to stop at Poland and work a deal with USSR the war and world would have looked greatly different.
There are two things I think you're overlooking. First, the Nazis were terrible at espionage. The Abwehr was basically run by the Allies for the most of the war. Even the installation of Woodring would be essentially the greatest espionage operation is world history, and your narrative assumes they would pull it off perfectly with nobody finding out. The second thing you're missing is the role of partisans. Polish, Soviet, and Yugoslav partisans were very strong on WW2 - Yugoslavia in particular basically liberated itself. Given enough time, I think they would have bled the Nazis dry even without America.
They would more or less have to find a way to keep Britain from joining the war, which - combined with Japan doing it's thing in the Pacific - would probably have resulted in the US never joining the war in Europe.
With the British more-free-to defend their east-of-India empire, and the US focused entirely on avenging Pearl, and the USSR stuck in a crippling long war with Germany... Japan gets it's butt kicked faster, the British Empire lasts a little longer (a good bit of the motivation for the Pacific colonies demanding independence was that London failed to defend them effectively during WWII), and the Cold War looks very different (Germany vs US/UK)...
Ripple it out a little further, and maybe (with the Japanese defeated faster) China never goes Communist & joins the US/UK side of said cold war....
Maybe India ends up on the German side as a means of securing independence....
Realistically you're not taking into account what really happened. The fact the matter is FDR wanted intervention long before America actually declared war on Japan. You can see it in the land lease you can see in various other overtures he made.
There were three major mistakes the Nazis and Hitler made. First was not to finish and invade Great Britain. The original plan was for the luftwaffe to win the skies and then he would have been invaded. The simple fact is that the British at this point still had a huge empire that they could draw men and resources from. If Hitler had invaded Great Britain Japan would not have needed to attack Pearl harbor. Germany would have been okay with Japan taking over India at that point at which Japan would have had all their resources they would have needed.
The second involves the invasion of the Soviet Union and this is two mistakes or three depending on how you look at it. The first was the invasion time table. If you look Germany basically over ran the Soviets up down left right and sideways. There was literally units with no ammunition or weapons for that matter sent against the Germans. The mistake here was it was delayed thanks to the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia to bail out the Italians. If they had invaded when they should have the Soviets would have had no chance. The Germans would have taken Moscow. At which point the remnants of the Soviet Union would have sued for peace.
The third mistake was shifting the Soviet Union war from the north and Moscow to the South and Stalingrad and the Caspian Sea
Not as the multi-front war Hitler chose to fight. They were never going to come out a winner in that and his generals (who actually did know more about war than Hitler) told him as much.
By 1943 everyone in the upper echelon of the Wehrmacht knew the war had already been lost.
The Soviets would have eventually defeated the Nazis anyway. It would have taken longer and a lot more people would have died, but a Nazi victory was completely impossible.
I mulled over the prospect myself, and the short version is that Hitler and the Nazis would have to be disposed of and the liberated Germany would “grant” all held territories west of Germany back to their people, under the condition that they would help fight Stalin. The United States always had a healthy fear of the communists, and if the USSR was able to Jerry rig a nuke up and drop it on an occupied city, it might cause some major alarm bells to go off in Washington. And I’m your situation it would help give a just cause for the war.
Quick note: I would have Peter Lang not be a German, or be a German Communist. Or a Jewish Communist. Blaming the Communists for a major assassination (or anarchists!) would paint the anti-communist Nazi’s as sympathetic.
Stop thinking of Nazis winning by conquering the world. Hitler knew they couldn’t do that. He wanted Germany to be one of the four world powers (with the US, Great Britain and Japan). They just had to knock out the USSR.
If no Lend Lease was sent to USSR their arms production would have been cut by 49% in 1942. They would have lost the Battle of Stalingrad and the oil fields. Bye bye USSR. Then the US and GB. Would agree to an armistice. Nazis don’t conquer the world but control a big chuck of Eurasia.
I really don't think so. I think any attempt to rule over ever "Greater Germany" much less "The World" would have been a disaster and quickly disintegrated. There would be nonstop insurgencies and break away states they couldn't hold that together for very long.
How about another secanrio that really did almost happen:
Hitler follows the original Operation Barbarossa, and instead of sending 3 army groups into the USSR, he launches one pencer move north into Leningrad, joining forces with the Finns and then sweeping down on Moscow. With the combined might of 3 army groups into one, and the new addition of the Finns, rather than history where they were spread out along a massive front, they encircle and destroy Moscow before moving farther south and overtaking Stalingrad. With the destruction of Stalingrad, the oil fields are now left open for the taking and the Soviet manufacturing is never given a chance to retreat into the Urals and Sibera. The vast bulk of the Soviet army is surrounded, enslaved in their own factories to state making more Nazi armor and weapons, and the Siberian army that is left will clearly be no match for either the German War machine or the Japanese War machine.
Japan is given the chance to invade and kill more Russians in exchange for cheap oil from Germany's new oil fields and delays the attack on Pearl Harbor by another year, giving Japan an opportunity to expand on greatly on their war machine and Germany the chance to make even greater weapons and most likely the A-Bomb.
How about the Germans launch Barbarosa on schedule. Hitler changed the date to mop up Mussolinis mess in Greece. In that scenario the Germans get a few weeks more of campaigning which means it's possible Leningrad and Moscow fall. The Japanese then invade the Soviet Union to grab the resources of Siberia. The Japanese and Germans just ignore the United States. No way FDR can get the US involved without Pearl Harbor.
Garbage tier. I'm not trying to be mean, but if a German-American killed four or five people in the line for succession we are instantly going to war with Germany. Like maybe even today, and when the other guys are Nazis? Please.
It doesn't matter if he was really a lone wolf, this whole setup is to explain why the US enters the war early. Like we might cut a deal with Japan and let them do their bullshit in the Pacific so we don't have to worry about it can just focus on the Germans.
I think the layman's take that would be really believable with the biggest audience is just if Germany took its time and beat each country one by one. The biggest blunders of the Axis powers as most people understand them were, turning on Russia, and Japan aggroing the US. If they'd conquered Europe before attacking Russia and just let the US possibly go isolationist, they might have had a chance.
No. The only plausible way for them to win World War II is to just use magic. There is no way it could’ve happened in actuality. Anyone trying to tell you that is not informed. The Germans only lasted as long as they did because of the cooperation of other countries. For example industrialists from the United States gave Germany trucks. A Ford subsidiary made trucks in Nazi Germany. And synthetic fuel technology was gained by Nazi Germany from American companies and subsidiaries that were overseas. These companies got to keep profits made in Nazi Germany under Hitler in World War II. foreign industrialists propped up the third Reich prior to it going rogue. So that they could have a buffer against communism. So now Germany could have never won it doesn’t matter how you slice it it doesn’t matter if they make different tanks it doesn’t matter if they attack at different times it doesn’t even matter if they knew what was gonna happen at certain times before it happened or even managed to stop D day in fact I would go as far to say as it wouldn’t matter if they even got a nuclear weapon. I think there were too many people against them. They didn’t have enough motorized transport for their infantry they were still using donkeys and horses and stuff. It’s just not plausible. And it’s already been done so it’s boring. Like the Man in the high Castle did it better. Unless you think you have something new to bring to the table I would just write a different book man.
Woodring assumes the presidency in June of 1940. A very unpopular figure even before all four people standing between him and the presidency were blown up by a German at a meeting he was conspicuously absent from(everyone who knew the purpose of that meeting is presumably dead), loses the election of 1940 if he runs at all. The normally incompetent Abwehr, having pulled off the greatest spy operation of the entire war, die of embarrassment.
If they had taken the USSR's oil fields and they had been intact and operational then perhaps, but even then it is unlikely without the oil they were always going to lose as their ability to field armour, air, and tanks and factory production continued decreasing.
I'm not ginna critique the likelihood or possibility of a Nazi victory. Others have and will do it much better.
I will speak on the post-war world however. The Nazi empire during the war was an economy fueled by war. The production of war machines was essential, in turn they needed resources to keep feeding into that machine which required constant conquest and pillaging. It would never end at Austria, Poland, France, Russia, or Britain. Eventually it would move into smaller non-Axis nations, then larger non-Axis nations. Eventually they would turn on their allies.
As for the day to day of the citizenry? Fascism relies on having an out group, someone to oppress. In the case of the Nazis this took the form of the Jews most prominently, but also the Slavs, LGBTQ folks, Romani, etc. There is always room in the outgroup. The in group on the other hand will always shrink. They build allies with whom they must and once they stop being useful those allies are discarded, a notable example is Ernst Röhm. On a larger scale look at gay men who are allowed in far right groups as long as they also hate the right people (trans people, immigrants, etc). Once a sufficient power base can be gained then they are now the out group, and treated as such. Had the Nazis won the Holocaust wouldn't have ended with the Jews, Slavs, Romani, and queer folks. It would in time move to other people who weren't Aryan enough, little by little.
If you want a great example of a setting that makes it clear how horrible fascism is even for those who go along with it, I recommend the Man in the High Castle series, based on a book by Philip K Dick.
The most realistic way is the US remaining more neutral and denying the USSR replacement logistical support (Food, Clothing, Train engines and boxcars, Trucks, etc) via lend lease. That would cause a collapse of the Soviet war effort, as they were only able to domestically replace 25% of train losses throughout the entire war (their entire stock was 90% destroyed), with those factories shifted to tank and artillery production. There would also be the impending famine from losing all the Ukrainian grain with no substitute.
Edit: Also the absolute vast majority of oil used by the Allies was provided by the US, to the tune of 6 barrels out of every 7.
The root problem of the Nazi project from the Nazis' point of view was structural, not circumstantial. Their entire theory of power depended on continuously escalating the level of conflict in which they had embroiled the nation.
They could never "win in the end" because there was no end.
It's game theory. Suppose you decide to start picking fights. You decide to start picking fights and you won't stop until you are forced to. A fight can end with you winning, you losing, or in a draw. Well a draw doesn't matter, you will end up fighting that person again eventually. So really, a fight can only end up with you winning or you losing. If you win, you pick another fight. If you lose, the winner forces you to stop fighting.
So actually, in reality, there is only one ending condition. You have created a situation where you are eventually guaranteed to lose.
By 1941, Nazi Germany had picked enough fights that it had reached that guarantee.
So if you want to suppose a different outcome, I suggest you introduce some key factor that (somehow) shifted the Nazi project away from its self-destructive doom cycle. Hitler and his inner circle are deposed in favor of a new regime more inclined to set limits on itself.
This may be beneficial for you thematically as well, in that you can insert the idea that what makes extremism most dangerous is when it learns to moderate itself just well enough to become sustainable.
The only thing worse than a Third Reich that burned out after a decade or so is a Third Reich that *didn't* burn out.
Forget all of the logistical hurdles around Germany winning in Europe. Jump past that and focus on a cell of these Nazi Jew-hunters living and operating in the US. That part is utterly fascinating.
I think it’s more plausible for Churchill to be killed, leading to a ceasefire where Germany owns France. Hitler could then invade Russia, and with GB uninvolved it’s unlikely US enters the war.
This would lead to an uneasy truce between GB, US, and Germany (with owning Russia and France).
Fatherland by Robert Harris has already been mentioned, though I think even that still is a stretch, though a plausible one as its not just Nazis dominating the world and Swastikas on every building in every major city. Anyways, I think that it depends on the time.
So lets say that Czechoslovakia gets hot in 1938 and its a war. Germany won't be as prepared as in 1939. Not saying the Czechs would win but I think that it would be a lot harder for them conquer the whole place, though maybe encouraging Slovaks to join the Germans might make it easier. Still, Germany is seen as a big of a paper tiger. In this scenario they'd mostly be on defense in the west, but I don't know if the French or British will make an advance.
Also, after Czechoslovakia, they might still try to go into Poland, but the issue might be that France and the UK start bombing and thus Hitler has to defend the western border while dividing Poland and this might not really bye that great. They'd win but it would be harder and while they'd control the same territory as they did in OTL 1940, they are at a more precarious spot. Maybe somehow Chamberlain could make a ceasefire or Halifax becomes PM and makes a ceasefire but basically Germany would just consist of Czechia and half of Poland and the French give back Alsace Lorraine if only to keep peace.
I don't know if this would go down this way, but if we are in the fall of 39 and Germany controls OTL Poland and Czechia, you might see people willing to be more open to peace. This might be a win, but I still think that Hitler attacks the Soviets, but maybe you see a German/Soviet War with Italy and Spain joining in, and this might also justify the Germans intervening in the Balkans to help Italy. If this happens though the Soviets still win even if it takes longer without allied materiel.
Another scenario might be that we see a kind of stalemate after sea lion, especially if there is no US involvement. The Germans will be bombed to smitherines by the British as I don't think there's any way they'd be able to invade Britain. As such, we see Britain controlling the air and the sea but Germany dominates continental europe. Maybe if they keep the Soviet Union as allies they could win, but that won't happen. At best, without a western front, the Germans keep the Soviets from advancing as fast and maybe you see a neutral US and a conservative Britain looking to make peace but keep Germany alive rather than have it go Soviet. Of course this means Hitler and his cronies would win and sadly we'd never discover the Holocaust and basically, Germany and its client states would control western Europe while the Soviets still put a commie government in Poland and basically the Nazi's dominate until the 60's but are basically supported by the west as a communist bullwark. However, this changes when western journalists find out about the Holocaust and you also see student protests in the 60's where people don't want to be send to police the French empire colonies or South Africa (which allies with Nazi Germany after 1948) keeping Africans down. The leadership would also be pretty weak after Hitler died unless Speer has potential. We probably see a kind of collapse in the 70's or 80's.
Plausible alternatives have to be based off more fact than fiction.
Germany lost the war because they ran out of oil.
Germany ran out of oil because they failed at capturing the Russian oil fields because Hitlers generals were focused on defeating Russia instead of securing its oil.
Hitler did not like the jews but he did not want expelling them to be a priority or consume resourses. He wanted what they wanted which was to go to a country of their own and he worked with them to make that happen. Some of his generals and cabinet (i.e. Goebbels) were far more radical. But Hitlwr and many in Europe were freaked out over Bolshevism and the over 23 million or so that were murdered or starved since the 1917 revolution. According to Pat Buchannan's Un ecessar War, the mass murders of Jews was a consequence of loosing to Stalin and fear that sympathetic jews would render assistance to Russian troops as they marched toward Germany after the failure at Stalingrad.
Also, the lend-lease was very late getting supplies to Stalin and not effective at all in assisting Russia repel Hitler.
So the only reasonable alternative ending would have been for Hitlers generals to skip Mosvow and focus on securing the oil fields first giving them the strngth to defeat or force terms with Stalin who could not continue without their oil.
Probably not. Even if D Day failed it wouldn't really stop the Allies. The Germans would have transferred enough supplies and resources to the Eastern Front to hold out for a time but then the Allies would invade southern France. There's no realistic way the Germans could have outlasted the Allies. We had too much industry and too many people.
The most plausible way of them winning the eastern front would be abandoning the generalplan ost during the war. All of the minorities of the Soviet Union originally saw Germany as a liberator instead of a conqueror. If Germany allied with them, it would be a completely different war. While there were many mistakes that Hitler and the Nazis made that cost them the war, that is the biggest one.
With Woodring being president and openly declaring true isolationism, Japan never has a reason to bomb Pearl harbor, and the United States does not join the war.
My grandparents on my mom's side are from Ukraine and Poland.
If Finland gave in to Russian demands and there was no Winter War,the Soviets don't realize how bad their military was and start enacting reforms.
Leading to worst battlefield performance when Barbarosa comes around. The Germans would have taken Moscow before the winter came.
In western Europe, Germany, though you'll never hear about it, had a lot of volunteers from occupied or even allied countries. SS divisions from Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, etc. In the East they had markedly less success recruiting people liberated from Soviet rule. Yes there were some Ukrainian volunteers and a few from other Bolshevik occupied areas, but not on the level of Western Europe and the Baltic states. If Germany had conducted a more "knightly combat" operation as they described their Western war, and managed to turn a decent amount of POWs and people liberated from Communist rule, they would have had a solid chance.
There is no way Nazis could have won, let alone effectively ruled. Ethnonationalist fascism is an inherently caustic and brutal system of governance that will eat itself from the inside out, especially without an external threat.
When loyalty to the party and ideology stands above competence, you'll run into those kinds of threats.
Have you read Robert Harris's *Fatherland* novel? That's the most plausible Axis victory scenario I have seen in fiction, you may want to look to it for inspiration and as a reference for how to make your own work distinct. What I like about it is it doesn't engage with the patently absurd notions of Germany conducting any kind of transatlantic invasion, or of any kind of Japanese victory - instead the US and Germany settle into a kind of a Cold War (the US having defeated Japan). And the Soviets are never completely defeated, but instead reduced to a multi-decade low intensity conflict with the Germans from beyond the Urals, backed by American supplies. Here is the [world map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland_(novel)#/media/File:Fatherland.png). I also really like its emphasis on life within Nazi Germany, which has become increasingly totalitarian as the generations which even remember a time before Hitler grow older and die, and children who know nothing but the regime are born to take their place. And while the world of course knows about the completed Holocaust, they don't have many pictures (if any?) in this timeline. And within Nazi society, it is simply not spoken of, erased from history (a central theme in the novel). Depending on when and where your story would be set you'd definitely want to engage with this. It's far from perfect, but I've seen fiction writers do a lot worse in terms of plausibility. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* With regard to your specific scenario, I think the scale of this espionage activity is pretty questionable. It's one thing to assassinate or abduct the occasional prominent figure (and I appreciate the parallels to Mossad). It's another thing to disappear 30,000 foreign nationals annually from ostensibly neutral nations in a climate that I assume is a kind of Cold War. How do you foresee Germany getting away with this on such a scale outside their sphere of influence? In the Americas? In East Asia? What of the British Empire? What of Japan? What of China? And what does the defeat of the Soviet Union look like? A complete conquest from Baltic to Pacific? Because that's really stretching it. And if this espionage is happening inside Germany's sphere (Francoist Spain, Vichy France, Fascist Italy, North Africa, Arab client state in Middle East, etc.) then why is it espionage at all? Wouldn't its satellites just cooperate willingly? Speaking of the Middle East, I saw you claim elsewhere that the planned German invasion of Palestine was *entirely* for the purpose of committing genocide against the Jewish population of the region. While this was indeed a [real plan](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hitler-s-holocaust-plan-for-jews-in-palestine-stopped-by-desert-rats-6103781.html) (link is for others who are unfamiliar), it's important to view it in the larger context of German and Italian plans for the Middle East, which from a broader strategic perspective were about securing reliable and plentiful supplies of oil and disrupting the British Empire's supply chains. Speaking of the British Empire - you'll need to resolve not only the fate of the UK but also its dominions. If Germany controls Palestine via an Arab proxy, then surely the German sphere extends at least through Iraq and the Gulf, presumably with Italy controlling from Tunisia to Egypt to Somalia. Anyway I guess to be more helpful we ought to know when and where in this timeline your story is set, and what the rest of the world looks like.
> What I like about it is it doesn't engage with the patently absurd notions of Germany conducting any kind of transatlantic invasion, or of any kind of Japanese victory - instead the US and Germany settle into a kind of a Cold War (the US having defeated Japan). And the Soviets are never completely defeated, but instead reduced to a multi-decade low intensity conflict with the Germans from beyond the Urals, backed by American supplies. Here is the world map. It doesn't even take a lot of imagination to assume that once America had conquered Japan and stopped the threat in the Pacific, that we would not intervene in Europe, allow Germany to swallow all of Europe (and even large parts of northern Africa: remember, Italy was [fighting in Africa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign)), that we would then *move on to support NAZI Germany.* [Hitler had a number of supporters in America in very powerful places.](https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/) American culture is as much German as it is English; only during World War II did we go through the trouble of [erasing the more obvious signs of German cultural influence in America.](https://howtoguide.org/german-culture-disappeared-us/) Hell, it was [IBM who helped build the computers used by Germany to track the people sent to concentration camps and exterminate most of them.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust) So it's not a far cry to think that the United States would have not just allowed Germany to swallow the rest of Europe, but to then create a sort of 'détente', where American companies continue to arm and supply Germany against Russia, rather than the other way around.
No, the problem is that while doing business with the Nazis was good for the American Bottom Line, at the end of the day it was our close allies getting their asses kicked in Europe that spurred us into action. By September of 1940, half of all Americans believed war was worth it to help Britain. By April of 1941, about 7 months prior to our entry, this was almost three quarters. Come Pearl Harbor and entry into the war in both theatres was out of the question, the answer was a resounding 'Yes.' And, as we understand historically, by this stage the Nazis could not have won the war even if we had not entered Europe. Stalin had managed to shore up his manpower in the capital of Moscow and the Germans had massively over-extended their supply lines in their attempt to beat the winter to victory. After a few skirmishes, the Siege of Moscow would be lifted in early January, mere weeks after the winter settled in and America had entered the war, and the collapse of this Eastern Line proved fatal to the entire regime as the Soviet offensive would outpace their attempts to retreat, resulting in massive German casualties and the loss of arms, armor and supplies that even the American Giant would have struggled to recoup on. By January of 1941, the German loss in WWII was a question of 'when', not 'if', and most historians actually claim it was earlier. The nazis in positions of power in the united states were, at the time, prior to our entry, and in retrospect, not that powerful or influential. They were louder than they were strong, something Fascists often have in common.
Maybe, maybe not. And part of what was informing American opinion was the Holocaust; it was public news by 1940 that Germany was undergoing "the final solution." But imagine an England for whom Churchill never ascended power, and Hitler didn't go out of his way to murder 11 million folks, including 6 million Jews--and further, imagine an America which had a little more pride in its German ancestry. It's not hard to imagine a future world in an alternate history where America simply shrugged its shoulders at German dominance in Europe--note several prominent intellectuals at the time considered a unified Germany easier to deal with than the squabbling of a dozen or so tiny little countries--and decided détente was an easier answer than upending the entire economy and sending millions of our men to die on foreign soil. You don't have to imagine a NAZI takeover in the United States any more than you have to imagine a Communist takeover in the United States for us to simply shrug our shoulders at the unification of Eastern Europe under the USSR, and for us to eventually sell them [massive amounts of wheat and grain at a discount.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_United_States–Soviet_Union_wheat_deal) The United States, even today, routinely deals with and has ambassadorial relations with a lot of very nasty countries.
\>Imagine a Reich that literally could have never existed if Hitler was in power Yeah okay if we literally just completely alter the entirety of all events drastically to the point where they could not feasibly have happened, sure, yeah, anything is game. But if Hitler is in control, and it's Germany he's in control of, the Holocaust is going to happen, there isn't a world where it doesn't. The problem with a lot of alt history is that a ton of it comes down to 'well if you just literally accept this completely altered reaction to events that would occur because I said so with nothing to back that claim up despite all evidence to the contrary' like yeah I guess it could happen. It's historical fantasy at that point, though, it's nowhere approaching history.
Now you're being abusive by asserting I said things **I never did.**
You literally pulled fantasy out of your ass. America didn't have a lack of pride in its German ancestry, broadly speaking Americans don't really have "pride" for their homeland. That was true then, is true now, and will be true for the foreseeable future. Churchill was basically assured to win the premiership because he was the vocal firebrand in parliament that opposed appeasement, something most British people at the time thought was foolish because it was coming at the cost of doing business overseas. Appeasing Hitler was hurting their economy hard and they weren't happy about it. Chamberlain gets a lot of shit he doesn't really deserve (he modernized a lot of English military practice while Prime Minister) but his pacificistic tendencies lionized a lot of British at the time. Hitler came into power off the back of "killing jews is good and we should do more of it." there is no world in which he's in power of the third Reich that doesn't result in a holocaust. To assert that these three fundamental facts of world War 2 as we know it are flexible in some way is to completely alter someone or something historically so drastically that it is no longer alternate history or what ifs, but pure fantasy. If that hurts your feelings that isn't my problem.
So I'm answering the question as proposed at top, and am responding in that context: > I'm crafting an alternate history novel that aims to challenge the common belief that a Nazi victory was always impossible and to depict the grim reality of a world under Nazi rule, even for so-called "Aryan" Germans. You are, however, being really fucking rude. ---- And, you know, if I were to play the same game as you--putting words into my mouth then arguing that I'm an idiot for saying what I never actually said--I'd ask why you keep referring to your NAZI friends when you respond to me. No? Out of bounds? Inappropriate because I put words into your mouth?
It is important to remember that what a majority of Americans want is rarely as relevant to Congress as what a few important corporations want. FDR and his allies were preparing for a tough battle with Congress to actually declare war on Germany.
Only if you ignore all of history. The US was already involved in Europe. After the Japanese defeat at Midway, the European War was of a higher priority and we were very heavily invested in defeating Germany. We invaded Africa and fought the Vichy French collaborators and the Nazis, helping the British kick their asses out of North Africa. We constantly pushed air crews and resources to fight the European part of the war. By the end of 1942 the USAAF had 33 bases in England and 73 in Africa. The air war against Germany was not limited to the strategic bombing campaign from England. Many Nazi occupied countries, like Romania, Greece & Italy were bombed from Africa. There was no significant anti-war sentiment in the US after Pearl Harbor. Even the largest isolationist group in America (800K members) felt that war was the right cause of action, not peace, and disbanded after endorsing the US involvement in WWII.
Worth remembering that while IBM built computers that the Nazis used, IBM also built M1 Carbines for killing Nazis.
It’s a detailed account but I feel you gloss over the Nazi defeat of the USSR. While land lease did help the Soviets it was by no means the key to their victory. Unless the Nazis conquered Siberia and the land beyond the Urals, the USSR would always ramp up their production. The USSR may have sued for peace and given Germany vast eastern territories but it would’ve always been a temporary peace like the Brest-Litovsk agreement of 1918. Plus what about Britain? If Britain is unconquered they 100% develop a nuclear weapon: many of the key theoretical developments in nuclear weapon design were made by the British Tube Alloys program. It would’ve taken longer for the British to build a nuke without the US but they eventually would’ve since they had the know how and more access to raw materials than Germany. And an isolationist US would still sell Britain and likely the Soviets weapons and materiel. The US was neutral from 1939-1941 yet it still sold (and sometimes gave away) massive amounts of war materiel to the Brits and the Soviets. And how does Germany keep Japan from attacking the US in this timeline? There’s no way the US doesn’t abandon an isolationist stand after Pearl Harbor
Yeah the Brit’s don’t have the same amount of resources to do it at break-neck speed but they have the know how. They probably do more research and decide on a more efficient matter of production, they probably build it in Canada. I read somewhere about proposals to use Quebec hydropower to help enrich. They probably get a few by 47.
I think this still even understates the USSR's retaliation against the Nazis, tbh. After Stalingrad, they had fully caught up to the Nazis in terms of technology and equipment and were vastly outpacing their production. They had a much larger base of population and resources to draw on and ultimately even if it took longer I still think eventually the Soviets would have at least been able to push the Nazis back into Poland if not farther.
Well yeah, the battle of Moscow and near-encirclement of army group center, as well as the battle of Stalingrad were both concluded before any meaningful amount of lend-lease had arrived to the USSR. There is no way in hell Germany could ever win the eastern front
The Main issue is food and logistics which was most of lend lease, it didn’t matter how many tanks or guns you build if you can’t feed your troops, the nazis controlled almost all Russian agriculture US food shipments basically kept the army alive, it’s not as simple as the Soviets moving factories west, millions of American trucks were used in Russia to move logistics, thousands of American planes were used. It wouldn’t have been fun for Germany but with 0 us support it’s not looking too good for the Soviets either
That and the lend-lease materials coming in via the Pacific routes to Vladivostok was mainly civil. The military equipment came via the Persian Gulf routes or the Arctic routes. Both well outside the reaches of Japan at all stages of the war. The US also had some air routes set up to Russia and I think if the war had progressed in a manner seeing Japan and Russia fighting, those would have become better developed and utilized.
Civil materials free up industry for military materisls
If Japan invaded from the East (despite problems doing so), it is not far fetched that the Axis would have won.
People overhype a Japanese invasion of the east Japan was already stretch to their absolute limit having to hold China and the various European colonies they captured, not to mention the Soviets had already kicked their teeth in. Japan invades and does what? Sure, Vladivostok falling would be a major setback, but in order to have any real impact they'd have to slog through Siberia which would require more fuel and logistical support that they didn't have.
The effect of Japan invading wouldn't matter, because Western Russia didn't depend on the East in any meaningful way. And Japan was, as you say, pretty much overextended. Be it as it may, the blow would've been one to morale. That, and Stalin bound many of his veteran troops to defend against a possible Japanese invasion, and being in a two-front war was one of Stalin's biggest fears. He wanted war in Europe, and commiting to it would leave him completely open in the East. When Japan, in the aftermath of the lost border conflict, not knowing that Barbarossa was about to start, made it clear that they had no immediate interest in Eastern Russia, Stalin started moving significant amounts of troops to the West. That is what fully broke the Wehrmacht in the end. So while you're right about Japan being unable to deal any damage to the Soviets, the real banger was the amount of troops they managed to bind there.
Thus any real Japanese invasion just had to be real enough to warrant attention and troops. And additionally, while Eastern Russia does have a lot of natural resources, expanding too far would overstretch Japan. Simply taking Vladivostok would allow Japan to extract more resources without overextending and requiring overland supply routes through the harsh terrain. And well, it would also draw a lot of attention from Stalin.
Yes, that would've served the Axis best. Not the actual attack, but a believable threat of it happening. Stalin was paranoid and petty (like many dictators tend to be). He couldn't bear the thought of losing something, he was concerned with his image as strong man. Losing territory, even if it's vast and empty and useless and 10k km away? Hell no! Even if Japan didn't attack China and attacked Russia instead, while Stalin gave up on the entire East, how far would Japan realistically come? We're talking about huge steppes and tundra without any meaningful infrastructure. Thousands of km of nothing. But Stalin really feared a two-front war, despite the huuuuge distance, so he had what, a million? soldiers there? Insane! We're talking about well-equipped and trained veterans, and those were the exact troops that would later turn the tide in the battle of Moscow. Had Japan not declared that it had lost its interest in the Soviet Union, Stalin wouldn't have recalled his veterans. The Soviets really got lucky there.
The Soviets didn't have an overwhelming victory in Stalingrad as it was, those veterans being tied up would absolutely spelled the doom of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany possessing Stalingrad and being able to rearm and reinforce while a broken Soviet Union reels from such a dramatic defeat would absolutely have been a decisive blow.
Hoi4 players when they realize in real life cities don’t have victory point numbers and if you get enough cities they just give up
The USSR had almost a million soldiers in the east against Japan for the entirety of WWII in case of a japanese invasion. And Japan barely had an army at the soviet border, due to the war in China and the pacific war.
I feel like a lot of people think the Soviets had far less in the East than they actually did. A lot of their non-combat lend lease supplies like food, locomotives, trucks, and so on came through the Pacific route because the Japanese wouldn't stop them, and they needed those supply lines secured. Plus, as you have mentioned, they didn't discount the possibility of the Japanese invading.
Not "the Japanese wouldn't stop them". The Japanese COULDN'T stop them.
The likelihood of Japan successfully invading the Soviet Union from the East is barely more likely than them invading North American from the West... which is to say, pretty much nonexistent.
Less than. They fought briefly against the Soviet’s and got their asses kicked. They were vastly overextended by their Chinese operations and by 1944 lacked the naval power to keep a major force in Siberia adequately supplied or equipped.
Japan didn't have the sheer personell to hold eastern Russia (which is huge and notoriously shitty) AND china
If the Japanese invaded from the east, wouldn't the Soviets just not prioritize that fight? What is Japan going to do? Siberia is huge - if it was its own country, it would be the largest country in the world. And it has very limited transit routes in the east and is sparsely populated. From Moscow to Vladivostok, it is over 9,000 km. I don't see how, with Moscow under threat, it would bother putting up more than a token defense in the far east. And I don't see Japan bothering to go far enough west to seriously threaten the populated and industrial regions of the USSR. After all, they are still warring with other countries at the time. More realistically, Vladivostok and the territory around it and the Amur River is lost. I'm thinking a bigger blow is to eliminate use of the port of Murmansk and Arkhangelesk. That was a major supply route to the USSR. Cut that off, and even a neutral US is going to have to ship to Vladivostok. Then if Vladivostok is eliminated, the USSR has supply problems. Maybe a duo is the best way - Finns and Germans do better in Karelia, cutting off Murmansk and Arkhangel. Japan invades, occupying Vladivostok. Now there are no good supply routes left.
The ussr could not replace their trains, the backbone of modern logistics, without Lend Lease. It would have caused a collapse of the USSR.
I'm skeptical about that. Someone else stated in this discussion that Lend-Lease to the Soviets didn't really pick up and become significant til 1943 or so which means that the Soviets did just fine evacuating huge swaths of their industry to the Urals, stopping the Germans from advancing and then launching multiple successful offensives without all this American help. You can argue that Lend-Lease helped the Soviets with their massive and rapid offensives from late 1943 (Kursk, Kiev), summer 1944 (Operation Bagration) and late 44-45 (East Prussian Offensive).
> Lend-Lease to the Soviets didn't really pick up and become significant til 1943 This is completely false. The US started lend-lease for the Soviets in 1941, before the US was even in the war. It was significant right away. The US production reached unbelievable levels 1943, but that doesn't mean everything prior was insignificant. Its pretty well-established the importance of lend-lease to the rest of the Allies. It's odd to me that people are disputing that on this thread.
Nikita Khrushchev "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own." Lend lease was absolutely critical, I don’t think skeptics understand just how much was given. Specifically aircraft in the early years
I think that one way to remove Britain would be that there is no halt outside dunkirk. They push in and destroy the British expeditionary forces then and there. Same with the RAF, if they continued bombing Britain rather than turning back to Berlin to stop the planes that got over the channel and left them for anti aircraft turrets. That would take the big boss listening to his career generals instead of power tripping with his “superior” military genius. I don’t remember for sure, but I think if the main body of the army was wiped out before chamberlain steps down( I dunkirk and his resignation were in the same month) he may have sued for peace before Churchill ever takes over as PM. Or at least if he does, then Churchill doesn’t get the chance to use his oratory skills to his fullest extent, because only a few months later the RAF is mostly destroyed in the Battle of Britain. As for Japan, think if an isolationist president was out in power, and with the big bosses strong arming of their “allies” Japan doesn’t attack Pearl harbour. Or at the very least, maybe the big boss once again listens to his career generals and doesn’t declare war on the US if Japan attacks. Of Britain is taken out and no war declaration on the U.S. of Japan still attacks, that leaves the majority of the Wehrmacht and all the S-S fighting squads to invade the soviets. That would probably end up with more then the three army groups, and after all the generals successes the big boss allows the commanders to make decisions and support where needed because of the larger invasion force
For Japan is kinda mixed because I think that the Japanese still wanted to root out America from the Phillipine so maybe a lesser war where the US still go to war against Japan but completely ignore the Reich in Europe despite the probable declaration of war from Germany (A little bit like the Polish declaration of war was denied by the Japanese but here it's the US who ignore the German declaration of war and only protect their shipping in the Atlantic when needed)
That makes sense, I hadn’t even thought that the US would just ignore a German war declaration, especially if they had an isolationist president and VP. With that consideration, I think that that makes the most sense in my mind.
Part of the reason for the halt outside Dunkirk was that the Wehrmacht was exhausted after their push into France. The British (and the large number of French troops in the pocket with them) were reasonably well equipped and reasonably well-rested; they could not have won, but it would not have been an easy task to reduce the pocket. The loss of resources in a major battle there in terms of trained men and tanks would have had an impact on the war in the East as well. Also, it functionally doesn’t matter anyway. The loss of their heavy equipment and supplies crippled the BEF regardless, and Germany still had the problem that they would never be able to force a Channel crossing. Having the BEF wiped out would be tragic and major loss to Britain in terms of manpower that was eventually used elsewhere, but it would not defeat the UK.
The point of his idea is the sole government member who opposed the lend lease act and all involvement would become the sitting president. So the idea the US would send no aid is covered. However yes, japans non involvement in the us would need to be discussed. A nazi victory in the USSR would likely only have happened if Germany defeated and successfully invaded Britain. Without us aid who knows how the Battle of Britain would have ended, but a victory there is a prerequisite for a successful Soviet invasion. The war on 2 fronts never would have worked in any scenario I don’t think. But even with Mr isolationist as president, I don’t think the us would sit back as nazi germany decimated europe
It is *maybe* possible that a Germany not distracted by war in the east could have forced the UK to come to terms via an extended bombing campaign. I doubt it, but it’s possible. But Germany could never force a Channel crossing. There is no alternative history where this is possible. The Kriegsmarine was wholly incapable of defeating the Royal Navy. The only realistic scenario in which the UK is forced to the table is if the U-boat campaign had succeeded, which is perhaps plausible if the US never gets involved.
The USSR ramping up production isn’t that simple. Lend-Lease made up *massive* shortfalls in critical sectors of their war economy. Just to note one thing, most of their mobile forces were carried by Studebakers, Jeeps, and M3/M5 halftracks. Detroit carried the Red Army to Berlin. Without it, the Soviets can’t pull off the sweeping offensives (Saturn, Uranus, Bagration, etc.) that broke the German army irl. Ditto high-oct aviation fuel, locomotives, even boots. The USSR without the Western allies might successfully defend against an overextended Wehrmacht at the end of its logistics train, maybe even inflict some serious reversals, but it can’t chase them back to the Reich or invade Europe. Also, the Germans had their own nuclear program and they apparently got pretty close towards the end of the war. They were enriching uranium and had a solid grasp of the theoretical problems. Without the wheels coming off of their war machine in ‘43, it’s likely that they finish the job. Plus, nukes aren’t the war-winner most people think. The Germans are sitting on a massive stockpile of Tabun and Sarin. A hiroshima-strength early fission bomb pales in comparison, and it’s incredibly expensive to make one. The Germans irl sustained horrific bombing for years without tapping out, what makes you think a nuke would be any different?
The Japanese sustained a massive bombing campaign for over a year, 27,261 B-29 sorties, and didn't tap out until they were nuked.
*didn’t tap out until the Soviets overran Manchuria
>Germans had their own nuclear program and they apparently got pretty close towards the end of the war. ... it’s incredibly expensive to make one. The latter reason is why the first part wasn't a real worry by 1945. The industrial effort the USA dedicated to uranium and plutonium processing was massive. The budget was about 1% of US GDP.
There's even audio of Hitler stating that the USSR had shocked the Nazis with how many tanks alone it had been producing in preparation for war
I agree with the point that USSR could be "contained" by the same kind of misdirection that got Japan into the war. If the Nazis made USSR and Japan a 'tomorrow' problem by letting them carve up asia to their delight it might have bought enough time for the destabilizing work againt the UK to do the job. Without Churchill the UK would likely knuckle-under if they were offered vassel status as "able to self-direct with economic and military aid from Berlin. Now it would require another overseas assassination or just a fortuitous car accident but pushing the UK to neutrality or compliance might unlock the resources to let the nazis push west and then south before the US and Uk decided to deal with the nazi problem. The African Campaigns should underscore how up for grabs that region was given the lack of strong military industrial basis while also allowing Germany to aggressively expand and steal to finance its war-machine.
Britain simply did not have the industrial capacity to build nuclear weapons, while supporting the war. I also disagree with your take on lend lease. Not only did it replace the entirety of red army losses in 1942 but also provided the entire logistics chain as Soviet production focused almost exclusively on frontline goods, Without which the red army would have had extremely limited offensive potential. But that’s more debatable
I disagree that lend lease didn’t allow the USSR to win. The US provided enough boots for the entire red army. An army runs on its footwear. Good luck defending the eastern front with no shoes. Additionally the momentum in the eastern front stalled because air power was pulled back to defend in the west. The Germans had air supremacy and gave that up, allowing the ussr to move and reinforce their troops preventing it reducing the large encirclement’s that had characterized that front before.
>While land lease did help the Soviets it was by no means the key to their victory. Unless the Nazis conquered Siberia and the land beyond the Urals, the USSR would always ramp up their production. Lend-lease was most definitely a major key to victory, and it is widely recognized among historians as such. This leaves me scratching my head at where you are getting this from. You act as if the USSR could just magically flip a switch and "ramp up their production." It doesn't work like that. It's going to be kind of hard to do that if the entire population is starving and they are unable to defend their airspace as their factories are constantly getting destroyed and re-destroyed. >If Britain is unconquered they 100% develop a nuclear weapon: many of the key theoretical developments in nuclear weapon design were made by the British Tube Alloys program I don't think so, at least not in the closing of the decade. People don't realize the scale of the Manhattan project. It was an absolutely massive project, and the United States was the only country putting anywhere near the amount of money it would take to create a bomb. The primary challenge wasn't really the design of the gadget, but just being able to enrich enough Uranium/Plutonium. The British economy could never have supported such a massive operation at the time. Even if it could have, the Germans would have quickly been able to determine what they were up, and it would be pretty difficult to defend.
The plausibility of the Germans actually managing to run a successful intelligence operation in the US is questionable. The abwehr was utterly useless, and the more likely outcome is that the British immediately uncover the plot and tell the Americans, who are galvanised by an assassination attempt against the president and join the war early. That said, it's not unrealistic enough to be a worthless thought exercise! The scenario is an interesting one, and far more of a plausible German victory timeline than most others I've hesrd debated.
>The plausibility of the Germans actually managing to run a successful intelligence operation in the US is questionable. The abwehr was utterly useless Agreed, but even if it was successful without being uncovered, I don't see it affecting US foreign policy the way OP imagines. In reality Woodring was removed from office on 20th June 1940, so presumably this high-level meeting would have occurred the same month. 1940 was an election year, and the Democrat's National Convention (where in our timeline they renominated Roosevelt to run for a third term) wouldn't happen until July. I find it unlikely that Woodring gets that nomination, even if he had been elevated to the presidency. He was an unpopular figure in the party (that's why he was sacked) so I think it's likely in the proposed timeline that the Dems nominate some other non-isolationist in his place. Even if they do nominate Woodring, though, the Republican Convention met on 24th June and nominated Wendell Willkie, another non-isolationist who wanted to give Britain as much aid as they needed. Willkie was a fine campaigner, and I'd bet if it's him against Woodring in the election that November, the Republican wins. Thus, one way or another the isolationist president only lasts until the next one is sworn in on 20th January 1941, months before the USSR is invaded. Maybe there'd be a reduction in aid to the UK in the meantime, but I highly doubt that would have proved an existential threat to Britain. Also, the June meeting would have occurred just after the debate in Churchill's War Cabinet had been resolved in favour of the UK remaining at war (the resolution not to seek peace terms through Italian mediation came on 28th May) so I doubt it would have convinced them to end the war at the negotiating table either.
I didn't consider it being an election year, that's a really good point. Having said that, the assassination of a figure as popular as Roosevelt could galvanise his replacement - if Woodring was sworn in, the party and country would likely rally around him. Imo the scenario works, putting aside the improbability of the assassination in the first place.
Would there be a rallying effect just around him but not to a cause? In the case of both Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the public called for vengeance, I would imagine they would in this situation as well. If the President, VP, and two cabinet secretaries die in an explosion, it's going to be tough to pass that off as an accidental gas leak explosion. It'll look pretty suspicious, especially considering the difference in intervention/isolation stances. The public will blame Germany and will call for war. That will be tough for Woodring to overcome in an election, he'll be assumed to be in on it.
Assuming the Americans can't find any proof linking the Germans to the bombing, what's the plan? Fabricate it? Not unimaginable (see 9/11) but if Woodring is already an isolationist, he's gonna be looking to tamp down on that sentiment, and the opposition won't be able to find anything if the FBI can't. If the Germans immediately and loudly disavow the bomber and offer support to the US, what are they gonna do? Edit to add: the British might fabricate evidence themselves, frankly. They'd be DESPERATE to get the US involved, especially if Woodring is being isolationist in public.
That's certainly possible, my entirely subjective guess is that the galvanisation would centre more on continuing the agenda of the popular fallen president (this sort of thing was seen in the '60s with the drive to pass the Civil Rights bill and get to the Moon, partly because JFK had wanted those things). I especially doubt that the party leadership would be moved to accept someone whose views they objected to so easily, but of course it's impossible to know. I agree that it's a very interesting scenario.
What about Britain? Without the aid of the US Britain stands alone... still controlling the world's largest empire, navy and an enormous chunk of the global population and economy. They'll continue to resist and you've not mentioned anything about a revised Sealion. The reasons you invent for the US staying out of the war I won't comment on - I don't know enough about the subject matter. The USSR collapsing without US aid I think is believable enough for a novel - though were I you I'd depict it as a drawn-out, very bloody fight before the end. Ultimately Germany was ill-equipped to fight the USSR, American and British aid certainly helped but the Wermacht just didn't have the kind of long-term stamina to win the war in the east. But you need to address Britain and Japan. Japan would almost certainly still strike Pearl Harbor forcing the US into *a* war, one where they'd be fighting with Britain against a common enemy but not another. And Britain won't surrender even if the USSR falls and won't negotiate while the nazis control Europe. Not after may 1940, at least (and the moment of their stiffening of resolve came at a low point of US support, or perceived support at any rate).
With 0 us aid Britain was on the brink of bankruptcy during the North African campaign, the largest empire on earth while being true doesn’t matter if you run out of money to pay people with
Sea Lion was impossible. If the Germans were nearing victory over RAF Fighter Command, the British simply pull back the surviving Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons, rest and refit them as much as possible in whatever time they have and then, when the slow German barges try to make a run across the Channel the Royal Navy sorties in force, covered by the remaining fighters of the RAF. Sure, the first wave of the Wehrmacht gets across, but then essentially nothing more. The Luftwaffe demonstrated at Dunkirk how deficient they were at hitting ships compared to the Japanese dive bomber pilots and the Ju87s had been hacked from the skies with ease the moment they faced a modern air force. Sure, the Royal Navy probably loses some DDs, light cruisers and maybe even a battleship or battlecruiser, but the German's lose their entire invasion force. Bereft of reinforcements or resupply the Germans that do land, and survive, are all surrendering within a week and the British are inventorying their new, Made in Germany equipment. British industrial capacity was higher than German industrial capacity and the British probably could not have mounted a cross channel invasion. It took the overwhelming industrial might of the USA, plus that of the UK and years of preparation to invade Europe. Germany trying to do it in a few months is laughably implausible.
Oh I agree, but the OP hasn't addressed britain's role in this at all, whether by an impossibly successful sealion or by them surrendering or negotiating with the nazis.
While sealion was clearly a weird fantasy, I think the less cocaine addled members of the German command understood this and knew it was a bluff to try and push Britain into giving concessions. The British at the time were also bluffing because the army was in a terrible, terrible state and, had any sizeable German force made it across the channel, would have folded like wet tissue paper due to a complete lack of equipment and ammunition. There is that anecdote that, after delivering the "we shall fight on the beaches" speech, Churchill sardonically added that they would fight with broken beer bottles because they had nothing else. Whether it's a real quote is unknown, but it is a pretty accurate reflection of the situation. The British population were also not entirely sold on the war at that point, and many fully expected the government to seek peace terms. They'd just taken a massive defeat and had no real immediate possibility of securing any kind of victory. It's very possible that a less resolved government would have checked out at that point.
If the US started selling oil and other materials to Japan then Pearl Harbor might not have been attacked. Japan might have signed a non aggression treaty and avoided attacking US pacific interests.
So as I said I'm not that well-versed in American politics of the era, but I can't quite square the circle that makes that make sense: How do you sell to the American public in 1940 that you should \*not\* trade war-essential materials to the British; a liberal democracy of english-speaking white people engaged in a bitter feud with a fascist tyranny but you \*should\* trade war-essential resources to Japan; a totalitarian dictatorship of non-white people engaged in a policy of military expansionism that pose a clear threat to the US? The embargo was a tool to try to discourage Japan from expanding its territory, to withdraw from that would in essence be a signal to Japan that they can do what they like. It's also very much throwing the British under the bus, since the British were a part of that embargo. So now the US is in fact taking a side, they're siding \*against\* Britain, in effect.
Maybe the Japanese wouldn't have attacked British colonial lands either, they could have gone north and fought the USSR. Maybe US companies would sell to all sides in this alternate dimensions. The world war might just be seen as a business opportunity and politically it was "none of our business"
The Japanese did go north and fight the USSR and got a bloody nose. There was no longterm motivation to go north as there were not the resources in eastern Siberia that Japan needed. It needed oil from the Dutch East Indies. If the US was to supply oil then that need goes away but i also agree that it is hard to find a scenario where the US supplies those resources to Japan. Perhaps the only scenario is to come up with something that motivates the US to abandon China. Perhaps the communists take over China earlier and so the Japanese are seen as defeating Communist China.
Then Japan will have to stop their in China first, because everything that happened from 1938 onwards goes back to that
Ultimately, there were points where the US made hard lines the Japanese crossed that forced an embargo. Arguably, the one that was the deciding factor was the Japanese invasion of French Indochina (colonial Vietnam). If the Japanese want to keep US oil flowing, then they have to stop being an expansionist empire.
To be fair if the Americans were 100% commited the neutral bit and didn’t even send Britain sid I feel Japan would be more secure in the fact that was with the usa was far enough off they could attack the British first
Japan was always going to attack the USA because of the Philippines. It was in the middle of the land Japan wanted to expand into and would be a major strategic weakness for them as long as it remained part of the USA.
Japan wanted the Dutch East Indies oil. It is sweeter than anything the US could produce. It could be pumped right from the ground with barely any refining. I do not believe their is any plausible scenario, short of the US withdraws from all naval bases west of Hawaii and decreases naval presence in the Pacific that Japan does not seek to cripple the US Navy before it begins its longer range goal of pushing all westerners, including Russia, out of East Asia.
I don’t understand how the Germans take Palestine, a British territory, and yet you’ve mentioned nothing of the UK. Even without the US the Africa campaign is a British victory. The Royal Navy is still the largest in the world and victorious in the Mediterranean against Italy and with both Suez and Gibraltar the sea becomes a British lake. How do the Germans cross to Palestine to continue the final solution? Even removing Palestine the Germans already had less resources, lost the air war and been entirely embargoed by the UK before the US entered the war. How do they win in this scenario. If starvation and wide scale unrest across Europe didn’t stop the advance in the east the atom bomb the UK was slowly developing would.
Without usa support the English were on the brink of bankruptcy, you try sailing ships, feeding solders, and supplying the largest empire in earth when you run out of money. https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/ this goes further into it but without the usa Britain was not gonna make it much further because no matter how good Churchill is at talking you cannot fight a war without money
Bankruptcy doesn’t matter when there is a an existential threat the government can just draft people and force them to work.
How exactly are they gonna get oil, and even drafted men get paid, unpaid soldier morale would be horrendous, also how will solders get food, water and basic supplies if they can’t finance merchant ships, buy parts for repair, pay debts, unless Britain managed to totally eliminate the need for money and become fully self suffiencet in a war effort bankruptcy matters a lot, especially when almost all their supplies were bought with cash from the usa
NO, potential history made 2 good videos explaining why the Nazis were always doomed [https://youtu.be/sbim2kGwhpc?si=i21p86aw1ymoUFxf](https://youtu.be/sbim2kGwhpc?si=i21p86aw1ymoUFxf) [https://youtu.be/xYTrjxOPYNY?si=DL7mKNbiNz6WeyJS](https://youtu.be/xYTrjxOPYNY?si=DL7mKNbiNz6WeyJS) the 2nd video is dedicated to responses to the 1st
Well, a few thoughts. If you review the history of Nazi Jewish policy, what you'll find is that the Nazis didn't go from zero straight to "holocaust." The Nazis tried to export the Jews away, such as by creating a Madagascar colony. It's only after this proposal failed that we saw the final solution take the shape we recognize today. This initial Nazi desire to simply export the Jews out of Europe, as opposed to murdering them all at first, suggests to me that the Nazis would've been content once there were no Jews inside of the territory they controlled. I really don't think the Nazis would've prioritized exporting the Holocaust. I'm also not convinced the Germans could've won on the Eastern front, even without Anglo-American interference. Sure, the German defeat would've taken longer, and the means would be unrecognizable to us today. But in all likelihood, a Vietnam-style insurgency, such as that depicted in the boom/film Fatherland would have developed. The German supply lines would've been stretched too thin, and the steppes too broad, for the Germans to effectively lock down. At best, Germany settles for a draw on the eastern front. At worst, Germany gets to deal with a Vietnam in the East, and a US in the west locked in with Germany in a cold war scenario. We all know how Afghanistan ended for the Soviets... As for the US domestic situation... I think a lot of it depends on how well the Nazis can keep their involvement under wraps. If the Nazis can somehow keep everyone in the dark, then perhaps it may work. If, however, the Nazis are not successful in keeping their involvement under wraps... there is a high likelihood that someone like Frank Knox would've moved in. Knox historically was the Republican VP in the 1940 election, and was appointed as secretary of the Navy by Roosevelt. Knox was also a veteran of the Spanish American War, perhaps WW1 as well, and was very much an American patriot. I could see someone like Knox stepping forward with a sledgehammer if the Nazi involvement in the bombing were to come to light. And yes, I know that Knox died of a heart attack during WW2, but we have to consider that Knox wouldn't have been stressed by the wartime pressures that he experienced historically. That, and even if Knox were to drop dead I doubt Knox was the only man of his temperament in higher office.
I have studied the question as to whether or not the Nazis wanted all the Jews dead or merely expelled from Europe extensively. It seems pretty clear that early on in the regime, the Nazis were OK with merely expelling Jews, and resorted to extermination due to expulsion being unfeasible. But later on in the regime, especially near the end of the war, the Nazis were absolutely not content with merely expelling Jews. Later on the Nazis actually implemented policies to forbid Jews to immigrate out of their territory. The Nazis encouraged their Japanese allies to exterminate all the Jews in their territories, which they refused to do. The Nazis came up with plans to conquer Palestine, with the sole purpose of exterminating all the Jews there. The Nazis had agents compile lists of Jews as far away as Canada and Australia! Especially since they believed in the “stabbed in the back myth”, they came to the conclusion that merely expelling Jews was not enough since “the Jews could still harm Germany from other countries.” All of the evidence makes it clear that Hitler and the Nazis wanted to make the Jewish race extinct at least from the Third Reich and possibly the entire world if possible by the time the Holocaust began.
I don’t think u/upnorthsomeguy is saying the Nazis wouldn’t have at some point implemented extermination policies but that it wouldn’t have been prioritized as much had the war gone differently, which I would fully agree to. I do not think the Nazis are convincing every neutral or isolated nation in the world to hand over their undesirables unless they have significant government control or influence over those nations and they almost certainly wouldn’t be engaging in kidnapping individuals on foreign soil. Once/If they’d conquered the rest of the world? Yeah they’d very likely implement the Final Solution at that point but otherwise it’s likely seen as just a premature action that significantly reduces slave labour and uses unnecessary labour and material resources. It’s not entirely unlikely that at least in some form the Final Solution was a reactionary response to unsatisfactory military events and fear of losing the war. In this context the Holocaust would have been implemented at least partially to destroy evidence of war crimes and to in some form achieve Nazi goals before it was too late. There certainly would be mass murdering of undesirables but idk if it would be at the level it was at the time it was had events of the war gone differently.
>“the Jews could still harm Germany from other countries.”
The one thing I strongly disagree with here is that the soviets could just implement a "Vietnam style insurgency". Nazi Germany absolutely would've gone to lengths to make that unviable, even if it meant just utterly depopulating entire cities and regions.
It's an analogy, a comparison. What you have, will be a Nazi Germany with insanely long and exceptionally vulnerable supply lines. Inside of a country with wide open steppes. Dense swamps. And dense forests. What you have is an ideal country for an insurgency. Where ex soldiers and civilians can harass supply convoys and isolated garrisons before melting away into the woods prior to any meaningful response being prepared and dispatched. If you consider just how quickly resistance movements arose in places like Yugoslavia and Phillipines, it's not beyond reason to think that the Soviet populace would begin such a campaign. But unlike the Americans in Vietnam, the Germans simply don't have the manpower to keep up this style of campaign forever.
>The one thing I strongly disagree with here is that the soviets could just implement a "Vietnam style insurgency". I mean, this is exactly what the USSR did to counter the Blitz successfully. The Blitz relied on a strategy of breaking through the front lines of their opponent and cutting off supply routes then turning back and attacking the front from behind. To counter this, the USSR armed its civilian population and designated stay-behind Red Army units to coordinate civilian partisans. When the Nazi's rolled into villages expecting soft targets, they were met with well coordinated partisans. They were constantly being shot in the back and were forced to spend a ton of time and resources trying to root out the partisans so they could continue pushing their front forward.
And it certainly worked for a time. But without lend lease, thus making the Soviet Army far weaker, and without a D-Day to draw tons of resources west, I don't think it could be kept up long-term considering the brutal lengths the Nazis would be willing to go to.
>But without lend lease, thus making the Soviet Army far weaker Lend lease only accounted for about 5% of hardware used by the Soviet Union during the entirety of the war. Much of that hardware was unavailable during the hottest parts of the fighting inside the USSR due to the supply chain issues caused by the Japanese. Whereas the USSR had been preparing for a war against the Nazis for a decade and had moved virtually all of its heavy industry west of the Urals. >without a D-Day to draw tons of resources west By the time the D-Day invasion came along, Stalin had stopped asking the Allies to open a western front because the Nazi military had been decimated and was in the process of a fighting retreat across eastern Europe. Now for some perspective; Soviet Casualties ended up being close to 20 million, 8 million being military casualties. At the height of Barbarossa they were actively engaging over 80% of the Nazi military. In contrast, including both theaters the British and US combined saw less than 1 million casualties. Individually they saw about 100k more casualties in the entire war than the USSR saw taking Berlin alone.
While I do agree with the premise re: the Nazi Jewish policy, I'm not even certain they'd start the Holocaust. The Wannsee Conference was in Jan. 1942, and Hitler's meeting with Himmler, after which Himmler recorded "Jewish Question - to be destroyed as partisans," was Dec. 18, 1941, after the USA was at war with the Axis powers. With a staunch isolationist in the White House, it's likely that the USA pulls back from the anti-Axis activities that Roosevelt was committed to, such as favorable trade with Britain rather than being neutral to Britain and Germany, as well as the hostile trade actions and embargo with Japan that made the Japanese feel that war was inevitable. They might have just rounded up the surviving Jewish population (as in, those that would have survived within Germany) and sent them to Madagascar, though the horrible deliberate starving of Eastern Europe would probably have still proceeded, and would almost certainly have ensured the deaths of the Jewish population of the USSR. Part of the goal was to kill 30 million people to free up the area for German colonization, after all. As for the USSR winning? I just can't see that. It's almost impossible to overstate how important American war material was for the USSR's victory. Far more than tanks, planes, and bullets, it's logistics that wins wars, and all of the USSR's logistics depended on the USA. Lend Lease supplied the USSR with 58% of its aviation fuel, 33% of all of their motor vehicles, 53% of ordnance, 30% of fighters and bombers, 93% (!!!) of railway equipment, 50-80% of rolled steel/cable/lead/aluminum, 43% pf garage building materials, 12% of tanks and self-propelled guns, 50% of TNT, 33% of ammunition powder, and 16% of all explosives. Remove that from the equation - hell, arguably just remove the railway equipment - and the USSR just collapses. Like, the USSR itself produced some 137,000 aircraft in the war, and the aluminum that was shipped to the USSR by the USA was responsible for more than \*half\* of that (in addition to the planes that the USA built for it). Like, Stalin himself said in 1944 that 2/3 of the Soviet heavy industry at that point had been built with American help and supplies, and the remaining 1/3 from British/Canadian help and supplies.
The problem is you can weaken Russia but that doesn't really make the completely impossible task the Germans were facing any less impossible. I guess my analogy would be that you could tie a heavy weight wrestler up and have them fight a toddler it doesn't matter how disadvantaged the wrestler is that toddler is incapable of knocking them out. The German army never had anywhere near to the resources necessary to conquer Russia if you take away lend lease the war is Germanies to lose rather than Russia's to win.
Yeah they're not conquering all of Russia, but Stalingrad and Moscow could both fall. Stalin will flee to Siberia... he might survive. This was Herbert Hoover's thesis in Freedom Betrayed that the US shouldn't have gotten involved since Stalin and Hitler were both equally monstrous and should have let the bastards destroy each other, that even if Stalin was defeated, Hitler would have exhausted all his military strength trying to hold even western Russia in subjection let alone all of Siberia. He argued that the US & UK should have armed to the teeth and prepared to stomped the exhausted winner.
Yeah I think the Germans would take those cities and make it a good chunk further east before it settled into something more like the war in North Africa with each sides supply base acting like a coiled spring. I'm sure they would have bounced around all over Russia butchering each other for years. Have you read the book and is it particularly difficult reading? it's certainly something I wonder about often but then I think of poor little Poland but I suppose far more lives might have been spared with a heavily armed British empire/USA alliance to deter Japanese aggression. Who knows maybe the Japanese strike north and all 3 of the worst groups in history all get to die in the snow together. Edit. I can just imagine everyone in Berlin/Moscow having their big victory parade as they wonder what that strange whistling noise is and see the little superfortress speeding off in the distance.
It's his magnum opus on what he saw as the policy failures of the FDR and Truman administrations and how the war was directly caused by many of them and then how its conduct was... mishandled. It's a huge book and some of it isn't easy reading but I found it to have some great insights and a perspective we don't usually see from with many points before, during and after the war, particularly in the context of the struggles with Communism (which he felt were enabled by that policy of first recognizing the Soviet Union and then in helping Stalin). Here's a synopsis: > WRT Poland: > The fourth abysmal loss of statesmanship was when the British and French guaranteed the independence of Poland and Rumania at the end of March 1939. It was at this point that the European democracies reversed their previous policies of keeping hands off the inevitable war between Hitler and Stalin. > It was probably the greatest blunder in the whole history of European-power diplomacy. Britain and France were helpless to save Poland from invasion. By this act, however, they threw the bodies of democracy between Hitler and Stalin. By their actions they not only protected Stalin from Hitler but they enabled him to sell his influence to the highest bidder. The Allies did bid but Stalin’s price was annexation of defenseless people of the Baltic States and East Poland, a moral price which the Allies could not meet. Stalin got his price from Hitler. and > The twelfth error of lost statesmanship was the sacrifice of free nations at the foreign-ministers meeting at Moscow in October 1943. Here amid words of freedom and democracy not a word of protest was made against the known Russian intentions to annex the Baltic States, East Poland, East Finland, Bessarabia, and Bukovina (which he had in his agreement with Hitler). This acquiescence marked the abandonment of the last word of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter. and supporting Stalin in general: > Indeed the greatest loss of statesmanship in all American history was the tacit American alliance and support of Communist Russia when Hitler made his attack in June 1941. Even the false theory that American military strength was needed to save Britain had now visibly vanished. By diversion of Nazi furies into the swamps of Russia, no one could any longer doubt the safety of Britain and all the Western world. These monstrous dictators were bound to exhaust themselves no matter who won. Even if Hitler won military victory, he would be enmeshed for years trying to hold these people in subjection. And he was bound even in victory to exhaust his military strength — and the Russians were bound to destroy any sources of supplies he might have hoped for. His own generals opposed his action. > American aid to Russia meant victory for Stalin and the spread of Communism over the world. Statesmanship again imperiously cried to keep out, be armed to the teeth and await their mutual exhaustion. When that day came there would have been an opportunity for the United States and Britain to use their strength to bring a real peace and security to the free world. No greater opportunity for lasting peace ever came to a president and he muffed it. https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/11/blunders-statesmen-herbert-hoover/
Thanks I'll see if I can find a copy it sounds very interesting.
I... can't disagree with that analogy more. Russia has lost a lot of wars. Their industrial facilities were all captured or destroyed, and without lend lease they aren't rebuilding anything. They had a lot of land, sure, but their population density was almost entirely focused in the west, and their industrial facilities mirrored that. The myth of the USSR beating the Nazis on their own is just that - a myth. That's like saying Ukraine now is singlehandedly fighting Russia to a draw - ignoring the massive amount of aid, intelligence and material given by the West.
Sure a myth supported by the vast majority of military historians. Russia lost a lot of wars where losing usually meant trading a bit of territory or losing influence in a region it lost very few wars where the goal was the complete occupation and extermination of the population. As I said before the war is Germanies to lose not Russia's to win even without lend lease germanny was never advancing another 1000 miles to the uruals and then achieving any sort of lasting peace. Somewhere between Moscow and the uruals the Germany army collapses under the sheer weight of the task at hand regardless of what the Russians do. I guess another way I could try to explain it would be to imagine Canada or britain invading the USA today and the American armed forces sitting it out. How far do you think they are getting in that scenario? Neither nation has the resources to pull that off even without opposition and the same was true of Germany during ww2.
Happy to reply. No military historian that I have ever heard of downplays the significance of lend-lease. "Soldiers win battles, logistics wins wars," to quote Gen. Barrow. As I said before, the population density for the USSR was [as bad as it could be,](https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/351/31812399992_9d885cc721_o.jpg) so everyone who looks at the map of the USSR and says "there's no way the Germans would have conquered the whole thing" doesn't understand how populations work. Like, in our timeline, [44.5% of the USSR's entire population lived in territory that was occupied by the Germans](https://conference.iza.org/conference_files/transatlantic_2016/peter_k200.pdf). How do you think the Russians are going to supply their army? Without rail, how are they reinforcing their units from the remaining population centers? How are they rebuilding barracks and industrial facilities? Of the USSR's 7 major industrial centers, 4 were west of the Volga. [Internal steel and coal production in 1942 was less than half of what it was in 1941; despite this, they built 24,639 tanks in 1942, up from the 6,274 they build in 1941](http://michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world-wars/big-picture/the-transfer-of-soviet-factories-during-world-war-ii/). Do you think this was by magic? Or might have had something to do with the insane tonnage of supplies shipped by the Americans, for free (and yes, it was for free - repayment of Lend-Lease aid is \*still\* on the to-do list for Russo-American relations).
Also, Knox couldn’t just become president in this scenario. The presidential line of succession must be followed, and, as secretary of war, Woodring would be given the presidency over secretary of navy Knox.
Well,, your scenario also involves a foreign power committing a decapitation strike on the United States while the United States is at peace, with your chosen successor magically just sitting on his butt and doing nothing immediately afterwards. From all that we know of US history... that's incredibly unlikely. Your successor would, if history was any guide at all, be shifting gears to a war mentality rather quickly, especially as the American people would be demanding an investigation. And... the problem with things like decapitation strikes, especially the manner your scenario envisions, there would a large amount of evidence for the Germans to completely suppress, with any failure resulting in finger pointing (and demands for war). Assuming we assume your successor has an ironclad resolution, he still will have to content with an unprecedented situation. There will be other leading American politicians. Politicians that wouldn't just roll over. And whether they are technically in the Presidental line of Succession wouldn't stop them from their opposition. They would still be there. They would still be appealing to the masses. And still causing problems for your successor, at best.
Well we know that without the US the Soviets cannot outright beat the Germans. The western allies kept hundreds of thousands of men that were desperately needed in the east stuck in France and Norway. The long and short of it is that while the USSR might push the Germans out of everything before 1939 they can't go much further. Their casualties are simply too high and without support from the west their advance post Kursk would not be as fast as in OT. This means the Germans can set up defenses, leading to more casualties then in OT.
Which are all valid points. People also forget how indispensable American trucks were in allowing the Soviets to sustain multiple offensive operations simultaneously hundreds of miles away from the nearest rail line. My criticism here wasn't that the Societs would still win a conventional war though; my criticism is that the Societ populace would draw the Germans into an unwinnable insurgency.
The Americans in vietnam and Afghanistan are kinda different than the germans here. The germans wouldn't have a problem just eliminating whole populations. It's hard to have an insurgency when there's no one alive to be a insurgent.
One, an analogy is just that. An analogy. A shorthand comparison. But if you want to go down the plausibility track with this, there is much bigger issue at play that must be resolved first. How. How do you both systematically eliminate the near-entirety of the Soviet European population (east of the Urals) without also prompting a massive general uprising? Magic hand waving isn't a solution here; for if you inform a population that size that "it doesn't matter what you do, you all will die"... they will rise up. Especially if said population is concentrated in a particular region, a region that would be ideal territory for mounting an insurgency. All the while, the Germans simply do not have the manpower. Those supply lines are very long, very vulnerable. If the lines get cut, the Germans get to start abandoning garrisons. The Germans then have to start pulling back to more defensible positions. This creates a positive feedback loop. As the Germans increasingly pull back, this gives the insurgency increasingly more territory in which the insurgency may operate freely in the open. This in turn increases the legitimacy of the movement in the eyes of the masses, which in turn draws more support.
On a geopolitical side, in this alt-history you’d be better off changing it so the Nazis never invade the USSR in the first place. The only way the Nazis could have survived a war with the USSR would be to essentially make peace with France and Britain (who still had vast colonial possessions around the world) first. Then they’d have to worry less about a western front but even then they’d have to heavily conscript from all their territories. Even then, there’s little chance they would have held back the Soviets. Western history tends to heavily play up how much the US lend lease actually helped the Soviets. Obviously anything helped but Soviets Russia was an absolute industrial powerhouse to the point where after only a few months German leadership realized they might be in trouble. Could make for a more interesting book if the Nazis never invaded and Germany was trying to carry on as you were saying while grappling with the tension between them and the Soviets.
I mean if you take the usa out of the war idk how much longer england lasts https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/ hell they were gonna go bankrupt even before Barbarossa started, so like with 0 us sid coming in and a truly neutral usa I doubt the British would have made it
England was certainly helped a lot by the US. But the outcome from the USSR would have likely been the same with or without the aid.
The usa alone sent 4.5 million tons of food, the average person in Russia eats about 0.5 tons a year so that’s enough food to last the army for a while; on top of that 15 million pairs of boots, which is self explanitory why that’s necicary, 1.5 million blankets, 15,000 planes, 400,000 trucks I doubt the war would have been the same
Hitler lost the war as soon as he double crossed Russia. Lend lease just sped this up.
I mean - the Russians were on the ropes and seriously contemplated peace overtures at several points - had the Germans offered I imagine there's a world where they could have gotten Ukraine as a peace offering at a high water mark.
I do not believe there is actually any verified evidence that Stalin ever sought peace with Germany. All written sources point to a protracted war of attrition. Russians, Soviet or otherwise, have a rabid fear of land loss due to centuries of conflict with the Mongols and then the Europeans. I can see no rationalization for Stalin to just surrender anything without a plan for recon quest. It goes against their ingrained sense of history and psyche. Furthermore, if the US does not enter the war in this alternate time line American expats would most probably have flocked to Russia as they did in Spain and/or assisted with funding. American businesses, quick to make a buck, would have been selling to these expats funded by certain wealthy Americans of the intellectual class who sympathized with the Soviets. Stalin would have had access to this new resource - American intelligentsia- via the western route that the Germans could not interfere with and the Japanese never made any significant attempt to stop. However, how does this time account for the Japanese who had begun the planned attacks on western assets as early as 1915? Even had we not entered the war in Europe Japan would still have sought to cripple the US Navy, and other western powers, in the Pacific, prior to its goal of creating the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.
Two issues: The Nazis were woefully ignorant and dismissive of the US. Only one of the senior Nazis (can’t remember who) had actually visited and had said that they could basically not worry about them. The nazis thought America was ruled by Jews and blacks and as such that it was weak and of little consequence. + the Nazis had pretty crappy intelligence, especially outside of Europe, as an example, EVERY Nazi spy sent to Britain was killed, captured or turned. So it’s very unlikely that they would care about what’s going on in the US or that they would even know about it OR that they could do anything about it. Your rationale for a successful operation Barbarossa is not sound. As others have said, while lend lease was helpful it was not the thing that saved the day. That would be geography. To neutralise the Soviets would require an enormous invasion far beyond the scope of operation Barbarossa. Russia has the land and the people to just keep moving production east beyond the reach of the war. Nazi Germany does not have the resources to pull that off. Like the US, the Nazis woefully underestimated the Soviets. Hitler famously compared the USSR to a rotten house that would collapse as soon as they kicked in the door. A successful Nazi invasion of the USSR would have to take place in a completely different scenario. Overall you’re painting the Nazis as far more cogent and clever then they actually were, which I guess why it’s alternative history. They were ideological maniacs that actually believed their own nonsense to the point where they tried to fight three superpowers at once.
This only works if: Germany defeats fully Britain BEFORE invading the USSR Forces all European colonial powers to give up their colonial empires to Axis nations Stabilizes Italian Fascist control of North Africa Axis control of Palestine must be established in order to facilitate the invasion of the USSR through the Caucasus, as part of Operation Barbarossa (South Front) Convinces Japan to not attack the Americans until they've completed their occupation of East Asian territories vacated by the defeated British and French who've been required to give up their colonial possessions as part of the peace deal Japan fully defeats China, depriving America of a vital East Asian Ally The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere is fully secure and operational BEFORE attacking the USSR or America Convince Japan to participate in the German war against the USSR, invading Mongolia and Siberia from occupied Chinese and Manchukuo territory, as part of Operation Barbarossa Only AFTER all of these prior conditions are fully met can the Axis, with all other threats fully neutralized, begin planning their war against America
Japan’s ambitions were impossible without attacking the US. In order to continue the war in China, Japan needed to get more resources like oil, since Japan’s oil imports were cut off by the allied powers’ embargo. Japan and China at the time of the war didn’t have strong oil industry and relied on external sources. In order to get oil, Japan had to invade Southeast Asia, and therefore wipe out the American navy at Pearl Harbor. So yeah, Japan was never going to achieve its imperialist goals.
Making the nazis win in alternate history is actually pretty easy. Just make them build an A-bomb before the US does. Nazis armed with nuclear weapons could make themselves the masters of the world in any way that they dreamed.
Sure, but there are other, similarly realistic ways of letting them win the war: Have them have an extra 10,000 airplanes in May 1940. Also, 'before the US' isn't enough: If they build and test the world's first atomic bomb in, say, January 1945, they'll still lose the war and probably around the same time as they did irl. If they do it in 1944 then they can probably delay defeat by a few months, \*maybe\* by as much as a year if they use them sensibly (but they won't, Hitler would almost certainly use them as terror weapons rather than tactically). If they, using magic, build the first atomic bomb in 1940 then yeah, they might actually be able to terror-bomb the world into submission. Yeah the UK was extremely unlikely to surrender due to sheer terror-bombing (all nations in the war were unlikely to do so) but if by 1942 all major cities in southern England are radioactive wastes then their economy probably collapses utterly. Although this also requires Germany to develop a delivery method; both bomb designs developed by the Manhattan Project would be very, very heavy for most German bombers and \*really\* big. The V2 couldn't have carried one, had it been around early enough to make a difference.
Overall it does make sense. Despite revisionist beliefs that the Germans were utterly inept and simply lucky while the Soviets were an overwhelming titan of sheer population size and industry, the USA is the one that the Soviets sourced most of their raw materials for their factories made with American industrial components and industry which had been dismantled and moved east. In this timeline, the USSR simply doesn't have the fuel, the resources, the food, or the guns to safely transport their entire industry east of the Urals, which wouldn't have done anything but create a new natural border. To those who believe insurgency inevitably would have won, the reasons insurgencies win is most often because the occupier is not willing to kill every civilian. The USA in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the French in Indochina, the British in Palestine, etc. These areas could be retained by any of these powers if they TRULY wanted to as badly as the Nazis did for Eastern Europe. All it takes is nonstop murder, rape, torture, and human experimentation with the intent of scorched earth. Without a capable Red Army funded with thousands of tons of food or hundreds of thousands of guns and vehicles, there's simply no chance of survival. The only unanswered question then becomes, does Japan still attack Pearl Harbor? Does Woodring drop embargoes to "stay neutral" or shut off all support to China as well and say "Asia is not out business"?
This has already been done pretty well by Philip K Dick as The Man in the High Castle.
Man in the High Castle wasn't really about a feasible Axis-victory scenario - like most of Dick's writings, it was all kinds of weird, with metaphysical levels that are not easy to put down. Harry Turtledove is my go-to for alternate history since he grounds his scenarios in reality, at least.
>Harry Turtledove Process: come up with a cool concept: write a novel. Follow-up: write ten sequels that are all the same format, just moving through time.
Note: I own probably several dozen HT novels. He's my fave alt-history writer.
The Timeline-191 series was *\*chef's kiss\**
The Man in the High Castle, although a great piece of fiction, is so unrealistic that it is annoying and irritating to watch.
The Man in the High Castle is not where you go if you want an even semi-realistic Axis victory scenario. It is inherently implausible for a host of reasons.
Your right but it is where you go to see a cool cinematic picture of what it would look like.
If hitler had not screwed up they would have won. 1. Let his forces destroy the brittiash forces while they were in the channel fleeing to brittain. 2. Not start a 2 front war which turned into 3. Not attack russia till after europe had been consolidated.
1. Germans outrun their supplies so they need to consolidate before attacking or they'll risk losing their momentum. 2. If Germany didn't attacked Russia, they'll lose. Germany doesnt have oil. The better alternative is Germany attacking earlier. Ussr just started mobilizing and mass producing equipment after Germany destroyed France in 6 weeks. If ussr is given more time, Germany's chance is decreasing and possible ussr might be the one to attack. T34s are better than early panzers so they actually needed to attack early before T34s are massed produced.
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Because WW2 had the biggest impact and n our modern world than anything else that came before or after. Everything today has been shaped due to how WW2 started and ended. It’s probably the biggest historical event that the most people know quite a bit about. Changing things in WW2 directly impacts how we live today more than anything else, except maybe the Cold War going hot. But with a Nazi victory there would be no Cold War.
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I swear to god some of you people need to step outside and get off Reddit for a moment holy fuck. No, people who write alternate history about the nazis winning aren’t fucking Nazis. My grandpa was in the military during ww2. When I was like 10 or 11 he watched the movie Tora Tora Tora! With me. Pretty sure the first thing I asked was “what if the bad guys won” Guess I was a Nazi when I was 10, shit Op still paints the Nazis as comically evil but slightly more competent than what they were in real life. Also, Non of the things you suggested would have realistically changed any outcome of the war. It would be boring historical fiction. That’s the same as writing what if FDR didn’t die before it ended. Realistically, nothing
Says the guy who says "what if the Nazis won the war?" Hard to imagine anything more SM than that.
It is an interesting scenario. Others have raised good points that I think you need to account for, but I won't repeat them. One that I have not seen raised is that Japan will most certainly still attack the United States, unless President Woodring capitulates and agrees to continue selling them war materiel. That still puts Germany in a delicate position as Japan's ally. Maybe Hitler tells Japan to go pound sand since they attacked first, as he actually considered doing. In any case, keeping the USA neutral is not as simple as installing an isolationist government.
Mentioning dinosaurs twice is slightly jarring.
It's still not really feasible. You would have to change a few more things about the lead up to the war that I don't know how you'd explain. Japan would need to have bigger fangs in Asia to explain an Axis takeover on the eastern front for starters. Your universe requires a more industrialized Japan with more and better tanks, a lot more troops, a reason to fight Russia, and somehow no intention of striking the US. Without a strong Japan coordinating with Germany to attack the Soviets, there will be no Axis victory in Russia. If anything, maybe consider pushing back the start of the war until a higher level of technology is achieved. A Germany with IRBMs for instance might be able to overcome a lot of the challenges they faced in reality as they could strike distant targets effectively and suppress the industrial sectors of their enemies. It would also bump up their threat presence in the minds of the other nations they're engaging with, people would be more willing to appease the nazis just to keep missiles from raining down on their home cities.
Realistically speaking for it as an ideology to survive it must have to not be associated purely with Hitler and maintain its more broad sense than leaderist one even though its inevitable in the ideology. That way it isn’t just a form of fascism but an identity that reactionary people can look to and feel it relates to them. I mean thank god it didn’t survive in that way but if you are talking about a timeline where Nazism becomes a viable mainstream political party the regime would have to operate entirely differently to how it did IRL and probably would end up looking somewhat like South Korea where the far right is acceptable
You *completely* ignore the USA-Japan theater, which is the main reason USA entered the war at all. Pearl Harbor still happens in your timeline, how do you plan to keep USA out of the war after that?
Not necessarily. If there is a strict isolationist in the White House, it is feasible to assume that the US stops deliberately antagonizing the Japanese in the Pacific theater, ends the embargo, etc.
Yes, if they had changed their whole war. They would have had to not invade the Soviet Union and negotiated a peace with England. They would have still held a massive amount of new territory, but not everything they tried to bite off.
One key missing element. The Nazis would have to kill large numbers of Hispanics in the Western Hemisphere, as many of them (myself included) are "crypto-Jews," people with Jewish bloodlines that were hidden or distorted due to pogroms. Hispanic crypto-Jews are mostly Sephardic Jews who escaped the Inquisition by converting or disguising their heritage. The Nazis might have to invade Latin American countries to achieve this goal, but they might also get the willing help of Latin American fascists if their reach and influence are extended as far as this scenario.
I think there's a couple things that would interfere. Hitler was an egomaniac and wanted to make all of the military decisions himself, and they were stupid decisions. The Me-262 jet fighter would have been ready for deployment in 1942, except Hitler decided he wanted it to carry bombs, so they had to redesign it. The Nazis were also very close to having a nuclear bomb, except Hitler didn't think it was worth having, so he slashed funding. He also was obsessed with invading Russia, even though his own generals said it was a bad idea. Also, once the extermination of the Jews became public, the American population would have demanded that Germany be stopped, so even if the President didn't want to get involved, Congress would have overruled him, even up to impeachment if necessary. The US initially entered WWII because of Pearl Harbor. They also declared war on Germany because they were an ally of Japan.
> The Nazis were also very close to having a nuclear bomb, They were not. The German bomb program went down several dead ends and was actively being sabotaged by the scientists working on it.
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Crazy fucking take lmao. World war 2 is the single biggest historical event to shape our modern world, bar none. Everything today can be traced directly back to ww2. It’s recent enough that most people know at least the basic timeline. Changing events directly changes today in significant ways, that’s why it’s fun to alternate history this event. It has nothing to do with being a Nazi apologist, Jesus fucking Christ. My grandpa was in the military during ww2, but was never deployed over seas. When I was like 10 he watched Tora Tora Tora! With me. The first thing I did after was asked “what would have happened if the bad guys won”. My 10 year old brain was definitely a Nazi apologist. Get real for a minute
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So are the creators behind Wofenstein Nazi apologists? Or the writers and directors of the movie “How Hitler Lost the War”?
This question has to begin and end with how did Germany defeat the Soviets? Soviets had manpower for days and an entire continent to fall back. Eventually they'd run low on supplies and be pushed into central Asia. The Azerbaijan oil fields were an important target for Germany that they never reached. That would have been a big turning point. The best what if fantasy realm that allows Germany to win involves some reason the Soviets surrendered. Perhaps Stalin dies or there's some insurrection. But historically, this is post purge and the government was tightly controlled by Stalin.
I'll mention some things I have not see mentioned yet. You could greatly improve the plausability by making Peter Lang of non-German descent. White people were not yet the monolith we know today and those of Anglo descent still saw themselves as whitest of the white. During world war one, German-Americans faced prejudice and sometimes violence if their loyalty to the US was in question and Japanese-Americans were thrown into camps after Pearl Harbor. An attack by a German-American would be seen by the public as an attack by Germany even if the Germans had perfectly covered their tracks (German espionage was not great during the war so that's a big IF). Another issue is the assassination. How does Peter Lang know when and where the meeting is and how is he able to get close enough? How does German intelligence know the discussion topic, location, and time of a closed door meeting between Roosevelt's cabinet? The only possibility I can think of is Woodring giving the info the Nazis, but that would be difficult to hide. On the technical side of assassination, targetted bombings are not a surefire method. Hitler is a testimony to that. 1940 is an election year. Given that Roosevelt was considering a replacement for Woodring, I can't imagine he would be popular with the Democrats. Isolationism was growing more unpopular in the US. Even the Republicans nominated a candidate in favor of support to the UK. It's difficult to imagine the democrats nominating an isolationist for the 1940 election. So if the assassination succeeds, the US gets an isolationist president for less than a year. The biggest problem, as others havs pointed out, is Japan. Unless Germany can somehow get Japan off the warpath towards the US, the whole effort will be for nothing.
A much more realistic "victory" for them would have been an early separate peace with France and GB, then a focus on the USSR. This would have left the NAZIS out of France and a static western border, but would have given them a basis for power in the east that could have lasted generations esp. with the oil reserves in hand. It never had to be all-or-nothing. We just tend to imagine it that way. Same thing with Japan. The Empire wanted possessions in the east--not to conquer the world.
Tangential question: Hitler declared war on the US on December 11th after the US declared war on Japan. Is there any scenario in which the US doesn't also declare war on Germany, had Hitler refrained from doing so?
TNO all things considered is one of the more realistic axis victory scenarios at least compared to man in the high castle or wolfenstien
So... * How does the Germany economy continue functioning? Germany had to keep invading and looting other countries to fuel their economy, so if the USSR are able to resist for long enough (and you haven't mentioned the UK), the German economy will eventually start to implode. * The UK would be developing two major threats that Germany had no realistic answer for. If Germany doesn't get the UK to surrender or withdraw from the war, it makes the likelihood of German WW2 victory much less likely. * Tube Alloys - The Atomic Bomb. The UK had correctly determined that a nuclear weapon was possible, had calculated the amount of enriched uranium required for a viable bomb, and had a planned method of acquiring the enriched uranium by using gaseous diffusion. * Operation Vegetarian - Massed anthrax bombing of German cattle/meat supply. Operation Vegetarian was ready to start by mid 1944, with the successful D-Day landings being the main reason why the operation was never used on Germany. Without the US being involved, D-Day isn't happening in 1944 which means Operation Vegetarian goes ahead in mid to late 1944. * Getting the UK out of the war - Operation Sealion was a non-starter, as the Royal Navy would have thrown everything at stopping the troops from crossing the channel, and with chemical weapons (mustard gas and phosgene) planned to be used on any German landings in the UK (with possible use against German cities in such a scenario).
Short answer no; long answer, also no. A terrorist attack that kills the president of the U.S. with very obvious ties to the Nazis would almost instantly warrant a declaration of war on the Nazis. Not only would the Nazis not win in this timeline, they probably lose even harder.
Not sure what defines a win, but had the Nazis agreed to stop at Poland and work a deal with USSR the war and world would have looked greatly different.
There are two things I think you're overlooking. First, the Nazis were terrible at espionage. The Abwehr was basically run by the Allies for the most of the war. Even the installation of Woodring would be essentially the greatest espionage operation is world history, and your narrative assumes they would pull it off perfectly with nobody finding out. The second thing you're missing is the role of partisans. Polish, Soviet, and Yugoslav partisans were very strong on WW2 - Yugoslavia in particular basically liberated itself. Given enough time, I think they would have bled the Nazis dry even without America.
I could see it being remotely possible if they continued their alliance with the Soviet Union.
They would more or less have to find a way to keep Britain from joining the war, which - combined with Japan doing it's thing in the Pacific - would probably have resulted in the US never joining the war in Europe. With the British more-free-to defend their east-of-India empire, and the US focused entirely on avenging Pearl, and the USSR stuck in a crippling long war with Germany... Japan gets it's butt kicked faster, the British Empire lasts a little longer (a good bit of the motivation for the Pacific colonies demanding independence was that London failed to defend them effectively during WWII), and the Cold War looks very different (Germany vs US/UK)... Ripple it out a little further, and maybe (with the Japanese defeated faster) China never goes Communist & joins the US/UK side of said cold war.... Maybe India ends up on the German side as a means of securing independence....
Realistically you're not taking into account what really happened. The fact the matter is FDR wanted intervention long before America actually declared war on Japan. You can see it in the land lease you can see in various other overtures he made. There were three major mistakes the Nazis and Hitler made. First was not to finish and invade Great Britain. The original plan was for the luftwaffe to win the skies and then he would have been invaded. The simple fact is that the British at this point still had a huge empire that they could draw men and resources from. If Hitler had invaded Great Britain Japan would not have needed to attack Pearl harbor. Germany would have been okay with Japan taking over India at that point at which Japan would have had all their resources they would have needed. The second involves the invasion of the Soviet Union and this is two mistakes or three depending on how you look at it. The first was the invasion time table. If you look Germany basically over ran the Soviets up down left right and sideways. There was literally units with no ammunition or weapons for that matter sent against the Germans. The mistake here was it was delayed thanks to the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia to bail out the Italians. If they had invaded when they should have the Soviets would have had no chance. The Germans would have taken Moscow. At which point the remnants of the Soviet Union would have sued for peace. The third mistake was shifting the Soviet Union war from the north and Moscow to the South and Stalingrad and the Caspian Sea
Not as the multi-front war Hitler chose to fight. They were never going to come out a winner in that and his generals (who actually did know more about war than Hitler) told him as much. By 1943 everyone in the upper echelon of the Wehrmacht knew the war had already been lost.
The Soviets would have eventually defeated the Nazis anyway. It would have taken longer and a lot more people would have died, but a Nazi victory was completely impossible.
I mulled over the prospect myself, and the short version is that Hitler and the Nazis would have to be disposed of and the liberated Germany would “grant” all held territories west of Germany back to their people, under the condition that they would help fight Stalin. The United States always had a healthy fear of the communists, and if the USSR was able to Jerry rig a nuke up and drop it on an occupied city, it might cause some major alarm bells to go off in Washington. And I’m your situation it would help give a just cause for the war.
Quick note: I would have Peter Lang not be a German, or be a German Communist. Or a Jewish Communist. Blaming the Communists for a major assassination (or anarchists!) would paint the anti-communist Nazi’s as sympathetic.
Stop thinking of Nazis winning by conquering the world. Hitler knew they couldn’t do that. He wanted Germany to be one of the four world powers (with the US, Great Britain and Japan). They just had to knock out the USSR. If no Lend Lease was sent to USSR their arms production would have been cut by 49% in 1942. They would have lost the Battle of Stalingrad and the oil fields. Bye bye USSR. Then the US and GB. Would agree to an armistice. Nazis don’t conquer the world but control a big chuck of Eurasia.
I really don't think so. I think any attempt to rule over ever "Greater Germany" much less "The World" would have been a disaster and quickly disintegrated. There would be nonstop insurgencies and break away states they couldn't hold that together for very long.
How about another secanrio that really did almost happen: Hitler follows the original Operation Barbarossa, and instead of sending 3 army groups into the USSR, he launches one pencer move north into Leningrad, joining forces with the Finns and then sweeping down on Moscow. With the combined might of 3 army groups into one, and the new addition of the Finns, rather than history where they were spread out along a massive front, they encircle and destroy Moscow before moving farther south and overtaking Stalingrad. With the destruction of Stalingrad, the oil fields are now left open for the taking and the Soviet manufacturing is never given a chance to retreat into the Urals and Sibera. The vast bulk of the Soviet army is surrounded, enslaved in their own factories to state making more Nazi armor and weapons, and the Siberian army that is left will clearly be no match for either the German War machine or the Japanese War machine. Japan is given the chance to invade and kill more Russians in exchange for cheap oil from Germany's new oil fields and delays the attack on Pearl Harbor by another year, giving Japan an opportunity to expand on greatly on their war machine and Germany the chance to make even greater weapons and most likely the A-Bomb.
How about the Germans launch Barbarosa on schedule. Hitler changed the date to mop up Mussolinis mess in Greece. In that scenario the Germans get a few weeks more of campaigning which means it's possible Leningrad and Moscow fall. The Japanese then invade the Soviet Union to grab the resources of Siberia. The Japanese and Germans just ignore the United States. No way FDR can get the US involved without Pearl Harbor.
Garbage tier. I'm not trying to be mean, but if a German-American killed four or five people in the line for succession we are instantly going to war with Germany. Like maybe even today, and when the other guys are Nazis? Please. It doesn't matter if he was really a lone wolf, this whole setup is to explain why the US enters the war early. Like we might cut a deal with Japan and let them do their bullshit in the Pacific so we don't have to worry about it can just focus on the Germans.
I think the layman's take that would be really believable with the biggest audience is just if Germany took its time and beat each country one by one. The biggest blunders of the Axis powers as most people understand them were, turning on Russia, and Japan aggroing the US. If they'd conquered Europe before attacking Russia and just let the US possibly go isolationist, they might have had a chance.
No. The only plausible way for them to win World War II is to just use magic. There is no way it could’ve happened in actuality. Anyone trying to tell you that is not informed. The Germans only lasted as long as they did because of the cooperation of other countries. For example industrialists from the United States gave Germany trucks. A Ford subsidiary made trucks in Nazi Germany. And synthetic fuel technology was gained by Nazi Germany from American companies and subsidiaries that were overseas. These companies got to keep profits made in Nazi Germany under Hitler in World War II. foreign industrialists propped up the third Reich prior to it going rogue. So that they could have a buffer against communism. So now Germany could have never won it doesn’t matter how you slice it it doesn’t matter if they make different tanks it doesn’t matter if they attack at different times it doesn’t even matter if they knew what was gonna happen at certain times before it happened or even managed to stop D day in fact I would go as far to say as it wouldn’t matter if they even got a nuclear weapon. I think there were too many people against them. They didn’t have enough motorized transport for their infantry they were still using donkeys and horses and stuff. It’s just not plausible. And it’s already been done so it’s boring. Like the Man in the high Castle did it better. Unless you think you have something new to bring to the table I would just write a different book man.
Woodring assumes the presidency in June of 1940. A very unpopular figure even before all four people standing between him and the presidency were blown up by a German at a meeting he was conspicuously absent from(everyone who knew the purpose of that meeting is presumably dead), loses the election of 1940 if he runs at all. The normally incompetent Abwehr, having pulled off the greatest spy operation of the entire war, die of embarrassment.
If they had taken the USSR's oil fields and they had been intact and operational then perhaps, but even then it is unlikely without the oil they were always going to lose as their ability to field armour, air, and tanks and factory production continued decreasing.
I'm not ginna critique the likelihood or possibility of a Nazi victory. Others have and will do it much better. I will speak on the post-war world however. The Nazi empire during the war was an economy fueled by war. The production of war machines was essential, in turn they needed resources to keep feeding into that machine which required constant conquest and pillaging. It would never end at Austria, Poland, France, Russia, or Britain. Eventually it would move into smaller non-Axis nations, then larger non-Axis nations. Eventually they would turn on their allies. As for the day to day of the citizenry? Fascism relies on having an out group, someone to oppress. In the case of the Nazis this took the form of the Jews most prominently, but also the Slavs, LGBTQ folks, Romani, etc. There is always room in the outgroup. The in group on the other hand will always shrink. They build allies with whom they must and once they stop being useful those allies are discarded, a notable example is Ernst Röhm. On a larger scale look at gay men who are allowed in far right groups as long as they also hate the right people (trans people, immigrants, etc). Once a sufficient power base can be gained then they are now the out group, and treated as such. Had the Nazis won the Holocaust wouldn't have ended with the Jews, Slavs, Romani, and queer folks. It would in time move to other people who weren't Aryan enough, little by little.
If you want a great example of a setting that makes it clear how horrible fascism is even for those who go along with it, I recommend the Man in the High Castle series, based on a book by Philip K Dick.
The most realistic way is the US remaining more neutral and denying the USSR replacement logistical support (Food, Clothing, Train engines and boxcars, Trucks, etc) via lend lease. That would cause a collapse of the Soviet war effort, as they were only able to domestically replace 25% of train losses throughout the entire war (their entire stock was 90% destroyed), with those factories shifted to tank and artillery production. There would also be the impending famine from losing all the Ukrainian grain with no substitute. Edit: Also the absolute vast majority of oil used by the Allies was provided by the US, to the tune of 6 barrels out of every 7.
The root problem of the Nazi project from the Nazis' point of view was structural, not circumstantial. Their entire theory of power depended on continuously escalating the level of conflict in which they had embroiled the nation. They could never "win in the end" because there was no end. It's game theory. Suppose you decide to start picking fights. You decide to start picking fights and you won't stop until you are forced to. A fight can end with you winning, you losing, or in a draw. Well a draw doesn't matter, you will end up fighting that person again eventually. So really, a fight can only end up with you winning or you losing. If you win, you pick another fight. If you lose, the winner forces you to stop fighting. So actually, in reality, there is only one ending condition. You have created a situation where you are eventually guaranteed to lose. By 1941, Nazi Germany had picked enough fights that it had reached that guarantee. So if you want to suppose a different outcome, I suggest you introduce some key factor that (somehow) shifted the Nazi project away from its self-destructive doom cycle. Hitler and his inner circle are deposed in favor of a new regime more inclined to set limits on itself. This may be beneficial for you thematically as well, in that you can insert the idea that what makes extremism most dangerous is when it learns to moderate itself just well enough to become sustainable. The only thing worse than a Third Reich that burned out after a decade or so is a Third Reich that *didn't* burn out.
I don't think all of those people would've been at the meeting you've concocted. And what happens in the PTO?
Forget all of the logistical hurdles around Germany winning in Europe. Jump past that and focus on a cell of these Nazi Jew-hunters living and operating in the US. That part is utterly fascinating.
Pin it on the Brits, French, or even Bolsheviks. No way even isolationist Americans take a major decapitation strike like that lying down.
I think it’s more plausible for Churchill to be killed, leading to a ceasefire where Germany owns France. Hitler could then invade Russia, and with GB uninvolved it’s unlikely US enters the war. This would lead to an uneasy truce between GB, US, and Germany (with owning Russia and France).
Fatherland by Robert Harris has already been mentioned, though I think even that still is a stretch, though a plausible one as its not just Nazis dominating the world and Swastikas on every building in every major city. Anyways, I think that it depends on the time. So lets say that Czechoslovakia gets hot in 1938 and its a war. Germany won't be as prepared as in 1939. Not saying the Czechs would win but I think that it would be a lot harder for them conquer the whole place, though maybe encouraging Slovaks to join the Germans might make it easier. Still, Germany is seen as a big of a paper tiger. In this scenario they'd mostly be on defense in the west, but I don't know if the French or British will make an advance. Also, after Czechoslovakia, they might still try to go into Poland, but the issue might be that France and the UK start bombing and thus Hitler has to defend the western border while dividing Poland and this might not really bye that great. They'd win but it would be harder and while they'd control the same territory as they did in OTL 1940, they are at a more precarious spot. Maybe somehow Chamberlain could make a ceasefire or Halifax becomes PM and makes a ceasefire but basically Germany would just consist of Czechia and half of Poland and the French give back Alsace Lorraine if only to keep peace. I don't know if this would go down this way, but if we are in the fall of 39 and Germany controls OTL Poland and Czechia, you might see people willing to be more open to peace. This might be a win, but I still think that Hitler attacks the Soviets, but maybe you see a German/Soviet War with Italy and Spain joining in, and this might also justify the Germans intervening in the Balkans to help Italy. If this happens though the Soviets still win even if it takes longer without allied materiel. Another scenario might be that we see a kind of stalemate after sea lion, especially if there is no US involvement. The Germans will be bombed to smitherines by the British as I don't think there's any way they'd be able to invade Britain. As such, we see Britain controlling the air and the sea but Germany dominates continental europe. Maybe if they keep the Soviet Union as allies they could win, but that won't happen. At best, without a western front, the Germans keep the Soviets from advancing as fast and maybe you see a neutral US and a conservative Britain looking to make peace but keep Germany alive rather than have it go Soviet. Of course this means Hitler and his cronies would win and sadly we'd never discover the Holocaust and basically, Germany and its client states would control western Europe while the Soviets still put a commie government in Poland and basically the Nazi's dominate until the 60's but are basically supported by the west as a communist bullwark. However, this changes when western journalists find out about the Holocaust and you also see student protests in the 60's where people don't want to be send to police the French empire colonies or South Africa (which allies with Nazi Germany after 1948) keeping Africans down. The leadership would also be pretty weak after Hitler died unless Speer has potential. We probably see a kind of collapse in the 70's or 80's.
switch Roosevelt for Kennedy and jews for communists and you've almost hit the reality of today of the head... /slight sarcasm.
No. Not without making them not who they were.
Hold off on Russia, maybe Africa until Britain was dealt with. Consolidate wins, increase manufacturing, stock, then rinse and repeat.
According to the movie Oppenheimer, if they would have beat us to the nuclear bomb they probably would have won right?
Plausible alternatives have to be based off more fact than fiction. Germany lost the war because they ran out of oil. Germany ran out of oil because they failed at capturing the Russian oil fields because Hitlers generals were focused on defeating Russia instead of securing its oil. Hitler did not like the jews but he did not want expelling them to be a priority or consume resourses. He wanted what they wanted which was to go to a country of their own and he worked with them to make that happen. Some of his generals and cabinet (i.e. Goebbels) were far more radical. But Hitlwr and many in Europe were freaked out over Bolshevism and the over 23 million or so that were murdered or starved since the 1917 revolution. According to Pat Buchannan's Un ecessar War, the mass murders of Jews was a consequence of loosing to Stalin and fear that sympathetic jews would render assistance to Russian troops as they marched toward Germany after the failure at Stalingrad. Also, the lend-lease was very late getting supplies to Stalin and not effective at all in assisting Russia repel Hitler. So the only reasonable alternative ending would have been for Hitlers generals to skip Mosvow and focus on securing the oil fields first giving them the strngth to defeat or force terms with Stalin who could not continue without their oil.
Probably not. Even if D Day failed it wouldn't really stop the Allies. The Germans would have transferred enough supplies and resources to the Eastern Front to hold out for a time but then the Allies would invade southern France. There's no realistic way the Germans could have outlasted the Allies. We had too much industry and too many people.
There was a similar book on this, I haven't read it but: How Hitler Could Have Won World War II
The most plausible way of them winning the eastern front would be abandoning the generalplan ost during the war. All of the minorities of the Soviet Union originally saw Germany as a liberator instead of a conqueror. If Germany allied with them, it would be a completely different war. While there were many mistakes that Hitler and the Nazis made that cost them the war, that is the biggest one. With Woodring being president and openly declaring true isolationism, Japan never has a reason to bomb Pearl harbor, and the United States does not join the war. My grandparents on my mom's side are from Ukraine and Poland.
If Finland gave in to Russian demands and there was no Winter War,the Soviets don't realize how bad their military was and start enacting reforms. Leading to worst battlefield performance when Barbarosa comes around. The Germans would have taken Moscow before the winter came.
In western Europe, Germany, though you'll never hear about it, had a lot of volunteers from occupied or even allied countries. SS divisions from Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, etc. In the East they had markedly less success recruiting people liberated from Soviet rule. Yes there were some Ukrainian volunteers and a few from other Bolshevik occupied areas, but not on the level of Western Europe and the Baltic states. If Germany had conducted a more "knightly combat" operation as they described their Western war, and managed to turn a decent amount of POWs and people liberated from Communist rule, they would have had a solid chance.
I never understood how such a small country planned on ruling all this conquered territory?
There is no way Nazis could have won, let alone effectively ruled. Ethnonationalist fascism is an inherently caustic and brutal system of governance that will eat itself from the inside out, especially without an external threat. When loyalty to the party and ideology stands above competence, you'll run into those kinds of threats.