Germany could not win ww2?

[History Learner]

What was ‘decisive’ about it? The Germans were stopped and swept aside in March 1945 - just as they were stopped in 1943 in Kursk and they were ultimately stopped by the Soviets in 1942 and 1941 when the Germans couldn’t maintain their momentum due to losses and an inability to keep their forces in sufficient supply.

We're talking about possibly decisive offensives in the 1941-1942 period, not speculating such was possible in 1945. The specific point being proposed was that oil shortages meant such was not possible in the 1941-1942 timeframe, despite the fact that the Germans continued to conduct offensives into 1945 as previously stated.

 

[nbcman]

We're talking about possibly decisive offensives in the 1941-1942 period, not speculating such was possible in 1945. The specific point being proposed was that oil shortages meant such was not possible in the 1941-1942 timeframe, despite the fact that the Germans continued to conduct offensives into 1945 as previously stated.

The Germans didn’t have POL where it counted in 1941-42. The Germans couldn’t get supplies out to their spearheads to create the ‘possibility decisive’ offensive result that is being speculated about.

 

[History Learner]

The Germans didn’t have POL where it counted in 1941-42. The Germans couldn’t get supplies out to their spearheads to create the ‘possibility decisive’ offensive result that is being speculated about.

TURNING POINT: A HISTORY OF GERMAN PETROLEUM IN WORLD WAR II

At the outbreak of the war, Germany’s stockpiles of fuel consisted of a total of 15 million barrels. The campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France added another 5 million barrels in booty, and imports from the Soviet Union accounted for 4 million barrels in 1940 and 1.6 million barrels in the first half of 1941. Yet a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941. The 26 percent shortfall could only be made up with petroleum from Russia. The need to provide the lacking 1.9 million barrels per month and the urgency to gain possession of the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus mountains, together with Ukrainian grain and Donets coal, were thus prime elements in the German decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941.

The smallest of the Russian oil fields at Maikop was captured in August 1942, and it was expected that the two remaining fields and refineries in Grozny and Baku also would fall into German hands. Had the German forces been able to capture these fields and hold them, Germany’s petroleum worries would have been over. Prior to the Russian campaign, Maikop produced 19 million barrels annually, Grozny 32 million barrels, and Baku 170 million barrels.

Grozny and Baku, however, were never captured, and only Maikop yielded to German exploitation. As was the case in all areas of Russian production, the retreating forces had done a thorough job of destroying or dismantling the usable installations; consequently, the Germans had to start from scratch. In view of past experience with this type of Russian policy, such destruction was expected, and Field Marshal Hermann Göring’s staff had begun making the necessary preparations in advance. But a shortage of transport that was competing with military requirements, a shortage of drill equipment as well as drillers, and the absence of refining capacity at Maikop created such difficulties that when the German forces were compelled to withdraw from Maikop in January 1943 in order to avoid being cut off after the fall of Stalingrad, Germany had failed to obtain a single drop of Caucasian oil. Nevertheless, the Germans were able to extract about 4.7 million barrels from the Soviet Union, a quantity that they would have received anyway under the provisions of the friendship treaty of 1939.

Further on in the same source:

"However successful synthetic oil may have been at granting Germany some degree of petroleum independence, the technology did not come cheap. Capital and construction costs for the average F-T plant were on average RM 30 million. Production costs for synthetic oil and refined fuel products were also exponentially higher than that for natural crude.The average manufacturing cost for a barrel of synthetic oil was between RM 32-45 ($13-18) and processed fuel values averaged 23-26 pfennig per kg (approximately 31-44 cents per gallon). In comparison, a barrel of crude oil traded for 93 cents on the U.S. commodities exchange in December 1939 and in the same month a gallon of regular gasoline sold for 13.4cents at the average New York City service station.

Early funding for synthetic development was primarily derived from capital investment by the companies themselves or from private investors and banks. However, by 1939 the costs of production grew untenable for private industry and the German government began absorbing more and more of the cost. A report in March 1939 stated that of the RM 132 million ($328.6 million) already spent on synthetic fuel that year, the government contributed an estimated RM70 million ($174.3 million) in the form of manufacturing equipment purchases. The high cost of production did little to hamper Germany’s continued investment and reliance on the synthetic petroleum industry. By the eve of war in 1939, annual German synthetic production had grown to 16.7 million barrels. During its highest year of production in 1943, Germany produced 42 million barrels of synthetic petroleum; far exceeding the 34 million barrels of crude oil domestically produced or imported during the same period."

This is not to say there wasn't logistical difficulties in 1941-1942, far from it actually, but that there is nothing inherent to the issue that prevents the Germans from being able to score the decisive victories needed in the 1941-1942 timeframe to collapse the USSR. Indeed, as I pointed out, that Germany continued to conduct major strategic offensives into 1945 showed that they could still amass the fuel to conduct movements.

 

[GOU Limiting Factor]

If Nazi Germany defeats Russia in 1941, it's on track for Instant Sunshine in 1945. That's because, after Barbarossa, Hitler's word is mud; there's no treaty or guarantee he can offer anywhere to anyone that can be trusted, and they all know it. He's also snakeshit crazy, comically belligerent, and so is the state he runs. Appeasement has patently failed at every level by then; building and maintaining a coalition that can defeat Germany once and for all was the only solution to the diplomatic problem of interacting with the Third Reich. Defeating Russia or even Britain would just prolong the war until an eventual defeat, because this is a state that definitionally cannot coexist with others.

 

[Garrison]

Indeed. Wages of Destruction is a great book for learning about the German economy and logistics difficulties in this era. German logistics were going to fall apart after penetrating about 500 miles into the USSR, and not all the rearranging of variables about Yugoslavia or North Africa or whatever are going to change that. And that's not even including the threat of the US! They needed the USSR to collapse almost immediately, to then just as quickly seize the entirety of soviet industrial capacity, and then turn it towards the purpose trying to keep up with US production colossus. Already a very, very tall order, but then add to that the fact that the German plan for occupation was to starve and murder all those people they needed to run Soviet industry? Not a chance.

As Wages of Destruction also makes clear oil was not the be all and end all restricting Germany's military. They were short of steel, copper, rubber, food, labour, coal and just about every other resource. Barring the political collapse of the UK and USSR Germany isn't winning the war. Germany started the war in 1939 with a questionable plan for fighting the French that was little more than a rerun of WWI and no idea at all how to defeat the British if they simply refused to make peace.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Germany can't win WW2 but the Allies (UK) can lose it by failing to maintain the political will to keep fighting.

Once USA is in the war I cannot see this happening.

Even if Germany were to "win" WW2 becuase UK gives up, then realistically there will be a WW3 at some point. And Germany will lose it.

 

[DougM]

Germany was not able to take out the US by itself short of the US giving up and agreeing to terms. In 1941 the US had to much industrial power and it was building its military power up at a pace that Germany could NEVER keep up with. The only way that ends in anything other then an occupied Berlin is if the US decides the fight is not worth the bother,
And odds are in that case that Berlin ends up glowing in the dark.

The same holds true of Great Britain. They may decide to end the fight but Germany can’t truly win.
In the case of the USSR they had one chance and that was to cause a total collapse of the army and hope for a coup or that Stalin has a stroke a few years early. Then they may be able to exploit that before things stabilize but even that is unlikely as I am not convinced that Germany has enough men to occupy all of the USSR.

So basically as long as ANY of the three countries are willing to keep fighting Germany can’t “win”. It is the same basic issue that we see in the American civil war. As well as Korea and Vietnam. One side can’t actually win but they MAY *if they get lucky) get the other side to give up.

The stupidity here is that Germany did this to three counties simultaneously. Which shows the insanity that was Adolf Hitler.

 

[Catspoke]

Germany has to de-escalate after beating France in 1940.

1) Come to some final peace with the French in the summer of 1940. (and Belgium too)
2) Have the French resist Japanese incursion into Indo China in 1940. Hopefully this avoids conflict with USA.
3) No Sea Lion or Air campaign over Britain (which will just invite retaliation and drain stocks of captured fuel).
3) Of course no Barbarossa.
4) Hope if no Barbarossa is in the works, the British tire of the war.
5) The submarine campaign is futile and can't be won. Perhaps focus on prize capture of scarce resources (kind of like they did with the captured whaling fleet OTL).

 

[Deleted member 1487]

The Germans didn’t have POL where it counted in 1941-42. The Germans couldn’t get supplies out to their spearheads to create the ‘possibility decisive’ offensive result that is being speculated about.

By that logic the Wallies didn't have POL in September 1944 because they couldn't move up enough to sustain combat operations until they took Antwerp. Logistical difficulties aren't the same as lacking a resource. Even the US with it's near unlimited resources suffered from logistical issues at various points during deep advances, it's the nature of war.

 

[nbcman]

By that logic the Wallies didn't have POL in September 1944 because they couldn't move up enough to sustain combat operations until they took Antwerp. Logistical difficulties aren't the same as lacking a resource. Even the US with it's near unlimited resources suffered from logistical issues at various points during deep advances, it's the nature of war.

And I don't disagree with you. POL or any item (weapon, resource, or personnel) doesn't help if it isn't where it is needed. But Germany was affected by local shortages early in the war and it got progressively worse as they lost their cushion of importing oil from the Soviets and after they burned through the POL they captured in the West. And when your plan involves capturing the US POL dumps in the Ardennes to sustain an advance across the Meuse, you are not really providing enough oil to sustain offensive combat operations.

 

[Curtain Jerker]

I think a Germany could have won a Second World War, but to me, it seems unfeasible that Nazi Germany could've won the World War II that was fought.

Yep. If Nazi Germany didn't waste so many resources carrying out the Holocaust and had limited war goals and didn't have a massive bureaucracy where so many underlings worked against each other to appease Hitler then maybe they could have won.

Of course, if they had all that stuff they wouldn't have been Nazi Germany so it is kind of a moot point.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

And I don't disagree with you. POL or any item (weapon, resource, or personnel) doesn't help if it isn't where it is needed. But Germany was affected by local shortages early in the war and it got progressively worse as they lost their cushion of importing oil from the Soviets and after they burned through the POL they captured in the West. And when your plan involves capturing the US POL dumps in the Ardennes to sustain an advance across the Meuse, you are not really providing enough oil to sustain offensive combat operations.

You also have to balance that loss with increasing Romanian imports, increasing production in the Vienna Basin, increased synthetic oil production, and of course capturing the Polish oil industry, which alone contributed something like 500k tons per year (the Soviets supplied less than 1 million tons in the period they were trading with Germany).
So German production was increasing and peaked in 1943, then only because Allied bombing wrecked production in 1944 all over Europe. The Ardennes shortages wasn't due to lack of oil, but the use of only a handful of roads and increasing Allied aerial interdiction of supply lines. Attacking through the Ardennes in winter against a foe like the US wasn't the best choice logistically speaking, which is why the generals that planned it tried to talk Hitler out of his insane plane to advance on Antwerp. Of course by then Allied bombing had smashed production, but there were still enough reserves to fight the Battle of the Bulge, just not the roads to bring supplies up to the spearheads while also moving up reserves to continue the advance.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

I don't think Panzers in Detroit is conceivable, no. But Germany could win on the terrific bluffs they made headway with when it did seem like Europe had all fallen to the Nazi troops. Germany was on thin ice, and went to war when it did because it literally couldn't afford to wait. The Allied powers thought Germany was in a stronger position than it really was, and perhaps had there been an organized war effort over Czechoslavkia, the Germans would have collapsed like a house of cards. The German war was like a Mongol horde, overwhelming the underprepared. On that basis, they could have won. If Moscow falls, if Dunkirk is a bloodbath, etc. The collapse of the USSR was not so inconceivable (Stalin almost evacuated Moscow), and what that means is a Britain alone. London does not need to be occupied for the Germans to have won; only sidelined.

 

[Skallagrim]

I'll admit up front that pre-1900 is more my haunt, but a thread like this is always fun, and I'll take a stab at it. One note in advance: it's pretty clear to me that in post-1900, more than in pre-1900, lots of discussions like this one soon go into very detailed discussions about exact amounts of oil reserves, how many vehicles each side had, the number of bullets they had, the quality of their tires, even...! And that makes sense, since post-1900 we often have more accurate insights into such numbers.

But does that not often lead to a sort of "not seeing the forest for the trees" problem? Everybody has argued about Barbarossa's specifics very often, and it's happening again. Eveyobody has mentioned that Nazi germany can't win when fighting three global powers at once. The simple numbers mean victory is outright impossible.

Nobody has mentioned that such a situation could be avoided early on. I refer, of course, to the Dunkirk evacuation. And I wonder why nobody has mentioned it yet. They evacuated 338,226 soldiers there. They evacuated pretty much the entirety of Britain's army at he time. And they managed it because the Germans tarried. The Germans didn't have to tarry. I'll admit right away that such a indecisive fuck-up, caused by differences of opinion and clashing egos, is characteristic of Nazi (mis)rule, but an ATl where Hitler barks "March in there right away and take them all prisoner-- kill those who try to resist!" is hardly impossible.

And what then? Those poor boys stuck on the shore don't stand a chance. Resistance to the last man? Over 338,000 corpses? Highly unlikely. Some will resist and die, and then... surrender. It's the only viable option.

And then Hitler has some 338,000 POWs. He has Britain's army held hostage. Well, for starters, Churchill's political career is over. He was heavily doubted right at the start. Halifax was expected to step in. Negotiations (via Mussolini) were already being prepared for. The miracle of Dunkirk turned everything around. If there is instead a disaster of Dunkirk, then that is the end. Churchill is out. Halifax is in. Halifax, who was already prepared to negotiate at that point. And now Hitler has 338,000 negotiating chips. So negotiation begins, and Hitler says: "Your boys will be our guests. They will be treated well. Fed well. Cared for. And in a few years, they come home, fatter than they were. Unless you try to stab us in the back. If you do that, only their heads come home."

What Prime Minister is going to be the man who makes the decision that leads to 338,000 boxes being delived to Britain? That's... political suicide. No administration could possibly survive that. So as of this moment, it's "Do what that nice Mister Hitler says, and make sure he knows we're still his friends." This means that Hitler can at once draw away virtually all his defensive forces in the West, and re-dedicate them to service in his future campaign in the East. It also means oil is no longer a problem. The British empire has oil, and will provide it to that nice Mister Hitler on the cheap. That wil be one of the conditions for him taking such good care of his... guests. (And Hitler can surely go all "carrot and stick" here. Say to them: "In return for your compliance, we will make France hand over all its colonies except those on the North African coast to Britain." That's completely meaningless to Hitler, and it looks like a big win for the British Empire. Sure, Hitler rules the continent, but Britain rules the waves! We still matter, lads! This deal isn't a humiliation after all! Takes the edge off a bit...)

With no need to make a play for the USSR's oil fields just to have a chance, Hitler can go with the original plan without hesitation or delay: drive for Moscow. Stab at it. Far more than in 1812, taking Moscow is a crucial victory. Even if Stalin burns it behind him, that's no matter at all. Moscow is the rail hub for European Russia. If you take it from them, that is a huge blow to them. And under these circumstances, Hitler can take Moscow. Don't forget that they reached the city's outskirts in OTL. Stalin was literally weighing his options with his evacuation train at the ready. In the ATL, he has to get on that train.

Does that make it a sure thing? Not at all. But Hitler could win, given these conditions. He very well might.

And of course there are other considerations. Hitler knows that with Britain out of the way, the clash with the USSR is coming. And it'll have to be soon. Stalin was absurdly trusting towards Hitler (which is truly weird, considering his usual paranoia). He kept up his side of their agreement (sending supplies to Germany!) even when it was becoming clear that Hitler was about to attack the USSR. Stalin was warned, and dismissed the warnings. I think that, since Hitler's treachery was obvious in OTL but Stalin refused to recognise it, he'll act in the same way in this ATL. (His strange blind spot is, after all, not magically erased). But Hitler will know that he has to act quickly. This may cause two further oft-discussed changes:

1. Hitler may strongly urge Japan to forego their Pacific designs, and launch an attack on the Russian Far East instead, timed to co-incide with Barbarossa. This is credible, because the Japanese asked his opinion on it in OTL, and his reply was basically (in typical Hitler fashion) "Whatever, do what you want." Now, of course, the Japanese preferred the Pacific strategy, but that was in large part because they -- also -- had no damned oil! And in this ATL, Hitler can tell Britain to sell Japan oil. (Again, part of the deal...) This solves Japan's problem, and will realistically get Japan to agree to a "USSR first" strategy.

2. Since Hitler is in a hurry, and knows that he can't get distracted, he'll impress that upon his allies, too. As in: "No bullshitting around now, I need everyone you can spare for the crusade against the communist menace!" So when Mussolini starts talking about invading Greece, Hitler directly tells him not to do that. Russia first. Afterwards, he promises, Benny can have a whole lot of German Panzer to roll all over South-Eastern Europe. (Also, those French North African colonies Britain didn't get? They're for you, Benny. Say it with me-- Restored. Roman. Empire.)

...And those two changes avert a minor delay for Barbarossa, and give Stalin another front in the Far East. Now, before anyone says it: I know that the German intervention in Greece didn't really delay Barbarossa by weeks and weeks, as some believe. But it did delay a bit, and with the autumn rains coming around the time when you reach Moscow, literally every day counts. Also, the adventure in the Balkans and Greece diverted men and materiel that couldn't be deployed against Russia on time as planned, so avoiding that is also a plus. Additionally, I know that anything the Japanese do in the far East is only going to be a distraction to Stalin, rather than a substantial threat. But in a fight for survival, a distraction can have critical consequences...


I firmly believe that the above is not an unlikely scenario. It is certainly not a given, but the two projected "additional benefits", if added to the original POD, tip the odds in Germany's favour. I see Stalin retreating beyond the Urals, and European Russia being taken by the Nazis. That gives the Nazis their own oil supply, at which point relations with Britain can be normalised. Mussolini gets his North African possessions and German help in becoming hegemon of the Balkans and Greece. Germany has its Lebensraum, and is basically done. Britain gets its soldiers back, and can call it "peace with honour". Japan has some more of the Far East, and can consolidate the empire it has. The USA never even gets involved.

Is this the end of the story? Of course not. Hitler was a lunatic who wanted to conquer the world. Before long, he'd be planning for new conquests. Also, Nazi economics were a house of cards, and would eventually demand a new injection of plunder to make up the gaping deficits. That, too, would encourage new wars of conquest. On the other side, Britain, now free of Hitler's hold, will silently start to prep for a re-match. In the end, I think a third world war is likely, and I think the Nazis will lose it by way of a few mushroom clouds. But that's world war three. We're talking here about world war two, and I have outlined here a way in which I believe they could have won it.

 

[ennobee]

Win WWII? All the Nazis were interested in was winning battles. That is the only reason I can come up with to explain how they could be so stupid to open up three, even four fronts at once. Battle of France to big a win for the tanks? Start a battle of Britain on behalf of the Luftwaffe. Battle of Britain stalled? Invade Russia... I may oversimplifying, but the big picture is, Nazism and peace do not go together and so from the moment the first shot was fired into Poland, Nazi Germany had to keep on conquering until it won itself to death. And in the end, that's what happened.

 

[Garrison]

Germany has to de-escalate after beating France in 1940.

1) Come to some final peace with the French in the summer of 1940. (and Belgium too)
2) Have the French resist Japanese incursion into Indo China in 1940. Hopefully this avoids conflict with USA.
3) No Sea Lion or Air campaign over Britain (which will just invite retaliation and drain stocks of captured fuel).
3) Of course no Barbarossa.
4) Hope if no Barbarossa is in the works, the British tire of the war.
5) The submarine campaign is futile and can't be won. Perhaps focus on prize capture of scarce resources (kind of like they did with the captured whaling fleet OTL).

The Germans did consider this sort of long war defensive strategy and rejected it mainly because it offered no route map for actually winning the war. The British and Americans get to build up the massive air fleets that the Nazi regime fears and at the same time they are at the mercy of the USSR as far as the raw materials and food supplies needed to keep the country running. In due course the Red Army will have completed its rebuilding and Stalin will be able to ramp up his demands until Nazi Germany is little more than a vassal state. The defensive strategy simply postpones defeat, it doesn't win the war.

Nobody has mentioned that such a situation could be avoided early on. I refer, of course, to the Dunkirk evacuation. And I wonder why nobody has mentioned it yet. They evacuated 338,226 soldiers there. They evacuated pretty much the entirety of Britain's army at he time. And they managed it because the Germans tarried. The Germans didn't have to tarry. I'll admit right away that such a indecisive fuck-up, caused by differences of opinion and clashing egos, is characteristic of Nazi (mis)rule, but an ATl where Hitler barks "March in there right away and take them all prisoner-- kill those who try to resist!" is hardly impossible.

And you are starting from a completely false understanding of Dunkirk. The Germans did not tarry, the attacks on the perimeter were continuous and only the Panzers were affected by the halt order and that was not some crazy intervention by Hitler, it was a decision by the front line commanders necessitated by the degree of disorganization that had affected the Panzer formations. Add to that the Panzer commanders had their eyes on the big prize, demolishing the remaining French armies and storming into Paris. ​

 

[Skallagrim]

And you are starting from a completely false understanding of Dunkirk. The Germans did not tarry, the attacks on the perimeter were continuous and only the Panzers were affected by the halt order and that was not some crazy intervention by Hitler, it was a decision by the front line commanders necessitated by the degree of disorganization that had affected the Panzer formations. Add to that the Panzer commanders had their eyes on the big prize, demolishing the remaining French armies and storming into Paris.

On May 24th, the Panzer divisions were within twenty kilometers of the British Expeditionary Force. Gerd von Rundstedt, operating under the mistaken assumption that evacuation wasn't possible and that the British would soon surrender, prioritised future deployment against the French: he didn't want to risk any of his Panzer on what he believed would be a superfluous action, and he considered the situation an opportunity to get all of them in good order for the drive towards Paris. To him, that was "the big prize", yes. And if his premises had been correct, he'd have been right about those priorities. But his premises were incorrect, since evacuation was possible, and thus in actual fact, his priorities were dramatically mis-aligned.

You represent it as if his forces simply weren't capable of taking action, and as if perimiter attacks were the best the Germans could do. That's a misrepresentation. The issue here is that of priorities. Rundstedt got it wrong. Hitler wavered. Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder disagreed with Rundstedt, but Hitler was convinced by Rundstedt. Two days later, the evacuation began. If Hitler had suspected that such a thing was possible, he would have told Rundstedt to roll in there right away. Rundstedt wouldn't like it, but it would be done. And if that happens on the 24th, it's over by the 25th-- before Operation Dynamo can commence.

 

[Garrison]

That's not true. On May 24th, the Panzer divisions were within twenty kilometers of the British Expeditionary Force. Gerd von Rundstedt, operating under the mistaken assumption that evacuation wasn't possible and that the British would soon surrender, prioritised future deployment against the French: he didn't want to risk and of his Panzer, and he considered it an opportunity to get all of them in good order. To him, that was "the big prize", yes. And if his premises had been correct, he'd have been right about his priorities. But his premises were incorrect, since evacuation was possible, and thus his priorities were dramatically mis-aligned.

You represent it as if his forces weren't capable of taking action, and as if premiter attacks were the best the Germans could do. That's a gross misrepresentation. The issue here is that of priorities. Rundstedt got it wrong. Hitler wavered. Walther von Brauchitsch and Franz Halder disagreed with Rundstedt, but Hitler was convinced by Rundstedt. Two days later, the evacuation began. If Hitler had suspected that such a thing was possible, he would have told Rundstedt to roll in there right away. Rundstedt wouldn't like it, but it would be done. And if that happens on the 24th, it's over by the 25th-- before Operation Dynamo can commence.

Sorry but you are just plain wrong here. I can only suggest reading something like Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory to get a better appreciation of the battle. The Panzer forces weren't fit for action by the 24th, many units were down to 50% strength, mainly due to breakdowns rather than enemy action, and they had outrun their infantry support and logistics. Also I'm puzzled as to what else you expect the Germans to do other than attack the perimeter of the Dunkirk pocket? As to the loss of British troops, well even as they were in the midst of Dynamo the British were planning to send more troops to France and it took some forceful intervention by General Alan-Brooke to dissuade Churchill.

 

[TonyA]

I wonder, sometimes, about the weirdest things. Lots of discussion here about short circuiting the "Miracle of Dunkirk". depriving the UK of a propaganda victory of sorts. Can't help but think that had the Germans attacked the 338,000 Brits on the shore of the Channel, the "Miracle of Dunkirk" might yet have happened. Had 300,000 been shot and stabbed and bombed and drowned, taken captive, whatever, the 38,000 would have been the "Miracle of Dunkirk" Hell, 3800 might have been enough...this is "not so Jolly but more truculent and vindictive Old England"! Like the Kid said to the Sheriff, "Don't shot him, that'll just make him angry!"

 

[History Learner]

Expanding upon what I've previously stated, the path to a German victory is to successfully knock out the USSR and then exhaust the Anglo-American political willpower; as stated, Germany cannot hope to outproduce them, so she must bleed them enough to break them. To this end, as stated, the first step is to beat the Russians and this can be done by taking her most important cities of Moscow and Leningrad.

For Moscow, I'll quote from Robert Forczyk's Moscow 1941: Hitler's First Defeat

"By 15 October, 1st Panzer Division was approaching towards Torshok- i.e. moving away from Moscow! The forces dispatched to Kalinin were insufficient to achieve to achieve a decisive victory on their own, but the diversion seriously weakened the main push on Moscow and forced the Third Panzer Army to devote significant resources to a protracted attritional fight around Kalinin. If XLI Panzer Corps had pushed east towards Volokolamsk, the Germans might have been able to prevent Zhukov from establishing a new line east of Moscow."

As for Leningrad, Wiking in a thread of his covered how Leningrad could be starved out by January of 1942.

With this accomplished, the end of the resource and manpower train that is the Eastern Front would be over and resources could be sent Westwards. Strategic bombing would not be possible until 1944 and would even then be a very blood affair while the Germans could deploy numerous counters such as better Flak or even just simply moving their factories beyond the reach of escorted bomber flights. Without the Eastern Front, defense in depth can be constructed in France and Italy so as to make them impossible to invade without buckets and buckets of blood. In this context, the Americans and the British cannot continue on indefinitely and indeed IOTL the JCS and General Marshall were already seeing serious signs of exhaustion among the American populace by 1945 that suggested the war could not be continued much longer.

Unconditional Surrender, Demobilization, and the Atomic Bomb

Leahy admitted however, that there was "little prospect of obtaining unconditional surrender" in 1945, Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations, would write that the Navy "in the course of time would have starved the Japanese into submission" (Italics mine). Time, however, was a waning asset, especially to Marshall, who would later say that American "political and economic institutions melted out from under us [the U.S. military]". The Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion told the JCS what magazines and newspapers had been printing since late 1944: there was overwhelming public pressure to increase production of consumer goods. I am "afraid of unrest in the country," said Director Fred Vinson. I have never seen "the people in their present frame of mind." Aside from reports about the "national end-of-the-war psychology among [the] citizens" of the United States, the JCS heard from its own military intelligence community. Their best estimate was that total victory through encirclement, blockade, and bombardment might well take "a great many years."5