American strategic options vs a Nazi-dominated Europe?

Without the 'Special Relationship' that existed between FDR and Churchill Why does the U.S. even get involved with invading Europe? Why would the U.S. declare war on Germany? What is the threat? If the UK signs a peace treaty then the war is over and the U.S. can go back to attempting to dominate the commercial world.

The U.S. would still be worried about Japan and I see potential for war there but I don't see much difference there except that if the British Empire wasn't involved there wouldn't be a Southwest Pacific Theater involving the Solomns.
 
To get the range needed the Airframe of the B-36 was lightly built and it wore out quickly even under the more reduced usage during peacetime as a SAC bomber.

Two points.

How many B-17C were still flying in 1945? Only in the Coldwar when structural cracking after decades of use became issues. During a shooting war, rarely a problem unless repeated HighG maneuvers were done.

Near all problems were with the engines, not structural

2nd, SAC was very busy with LeMay, the B-36 weren't lounging around on airfields. They flew a lot of miles.
 
Without the 'Special Relationship' that existed between FDR and Churchill Why does the U.S. even get involved with invading Europe? Why would the U.S. declare war on Germany?

re-read the OP... Germany declares war on the US, not the other way round... the US doesn't have much choice in the matter... sure, it's not incredibly logical, but hey...
 
Here's a question - lets say things settle into a USA vs Nazi Cold War - with Europe under the Fascist boot heel and the USSR assumably in chaos, what would the USA do for allies and trade? Create allies in her image in the Americas, Asia and Africa from former colonies?
 
That makes sense. I always thought the OTL invasion of North Africa came from Britain, but doing major, exhaustive research (i.e. Wikipedia) I see at least one group sailed direct from the USA.

If you can sail an army direct from the US to North Africa, you can sail an army direct to France (Britanny or the bay of biscay), or Ireland/Wales.
 
If you can sail an army direct from the US to North Africa, you can sail an army direct to France (Britanny or the bay of biscay), or Ireland/Wales.

While true, sailing an army to France from North America IMO a bad idea. You can't ship supplies quickly, no pipelines for fuel for instance, plus the ability of the Nazis to ship supplies from inland far faster than they can be shipped from North America, and without an unsinkable carrier to bomb the railways from, or send fighter support.

Invading say Wales (especially if Northern Ireland is captured first, is a better idea since it would be far easier to interdict any fascist attempt to counterattack or resupply, plus the garrison would probably be minimal that far out.

Here's a question - lets say things settle into a USA vs Nazi Cold War - with Europe under the Fascist boot heel and the USSR assumably in chaos, what would the USA do for allies and trade? Create allies in her image in the Americas, Asia and Africa from former colonies?

South America definitely at the very least. If the fascists gain control of Europe the US is going to to be extremely paranoid about them gaining a foothold in the Americas. Toss in the British Empire, Canada and Australia in particular, for support and you have a fairly solid basis for an anti-Nazi alliance. When the Germans and Italians are beaten out of North Africa (which will ultimately happen as the USN asserts itself in the Mediterranean) and the Nazis will be effectively boxed in, even if they manage to subdue Britain (which of course is near ASB in itself.)
 
Here's a question - lets say things settle into a USA vs Nazi Cold War - with Europe under the Fascist boot heel and the USSR assumably in chaos, what would the USA do for allies and trade? Create allies in her image in the Americas, Asia and Africa from former colonies?

Not much choice if the US does not conquor/liberate Europe or at least part of Europe. The economic prosperity of the US in the early 20th Century had been built with capitol from Europe and markets there. Shut out of that by the new Facist empires the US business community must build on the much smaller trade with South America & Asia. Africa is a extremely long shot. In part because the old colonial mepires like Britain & Portugal, and the new empires like Italy & Germany would directly or indirectly control most of it.

In Asia the US has some opportunities to expand in China which has huge potential, or some small quasi independent states like Thailand.
 
In part because the old colonial mepires like Britain & Portugal, and the new empires like Italy & Germany would directly or indirectly control most of it.

Doubtful. Germany and Italy don't have the naval power to project authority into Africa, not with a USN bigger than all the fleets in Europe combined several times over. That doesn't mean the US will have much interest outside resources in southern Africa and bases in North Africa, but they won't be conceding either of those without a fight, one which the fascists cannot win.
 
Ok, I have to ask where we have gotten to in this thought experiment?
We look to be spending time with thoughts of the B-36 making it's combat debut (and what a debut), armed with nukes and hitting Europe either from the CONUS, Iceland, or the Azores? My thinking is that even 2 years ahead of OTL, we are not really seeing them before late 1946. So, we get to war in late 1941, all of 1942 is spent with no US major landings, just the islands campaigns, and then where do we go from there?

I think that the logical choice, given that we know the B-36 is on the way sometime down the road, is to ask ourselves do we risk a landing on the Continent (European one, that is), or do we push across N. Africa, getting bloddied more than in OTL without UK taking up Axis forces to the east, so more than OTL facing the US landings in 1943 NW Africa. Hence, we get bloodied worse than OTL, and progress less rapidly. OTOH, we would at least be fighting the Axis at the end of their logistal string, so if we decided to establish ourselves first, perhaps for all of 1943 without attempting to push forward with green troops against battle tested veterans, we could give the Axis time to overcommit themselves in an attempt to overwhelm the US forces.

If such took place, then once our buildup was sufficient to push forward, airstrikes on ports, convoys, roads and supply depots, withheld (mostly) up to this point, hoping to conceal how much damage such bombing could do, and to make the Axis think that bringing more and more and ever more troops to Africa is the way to go, then we can take out a good chunck of their ground forces as they end up without sufficient supplies to continue fighting. They then would be forced back and out of Africa, and this then gives the US airforces bases sufficiently close to begin plastering southern Italy (with fighter escorts) and softening them up for invasion.

As we were not able to land in Europe historically until mid 1944, and that was with the UK as a staging area and major industrialized population close by and in support, which we lack here, and not really taking much into consideration of how much more difficult the supply of our own troops is going to be lacking that, not to mention the far easier time the Axis have with just a single front in western N Africa, does it seem reasonable to conclude that ITTL, our war might end with a few demonstration raids, in 1945 or early 1946, and their be no need to actually invade Europe if the mushroom farms start sprouting? Basically, would the Axis hold us back sufficiently for the B-36 to even play a roll? Or would it just arrive a bit to late even in TTL?
 
Doubtful. Germany and Italy don't have the naval power to project authority into Africa, not with a USN bigger than all the fleets in Europe combined several times over. That doesn't mean the US will have much interest outside resources in southern Africa and bases in North Africa, but they won't be conceding either of those without a fight, one which the fascists cannot win.

That would be correct in a war. The question I was answering concerned peace time economics or trade competition in a situation where the US and Germany did not go to war contrary to the OP.

... not with a USN bigger than all the fleets in Europe combined several times over. ....

That condition came after a four year war construction program. If the US does not enter such a program its fleet is going to be a modernized version of its 1939 size.
 
Ok, I have to ask where we have gotten to in this thought experiment?
We look to be spending time with thoughts of the B-36 making it's combat debut (and what a debut), armed with nukes and hitting Europe either from the CONUS, Iceland, or the Azores? My thinking is that even 2 years ahead of OTL, we are not really seeing them before late 1946. So, we get to war in late 1941, all of 1942 is spent with no US major landings, just the islands campaigns, and then where do we go from there?

Even if you disagree with Stuart Slades politics or his writing's. He lays out fairly detailed history of what a B-36 development program would look if it was prioritized from the beginning and what the time frames would look like if the UK made peace with Germany in the middle of 1940. The history on his wiki page for "TBO" lays out a good starting point.

http://tbo.wikidot.com/b-36
 
Two points.

How many B-17C were still flying in 1945? Only in the Coldwar when structural cracking after decades of use became issues. During a shooting war, rarely a problem unless repeated HighG maneuvers were done.

Near all problems were with the engines, not structural

2nd, SAC was very busy with LeMay, the B-36 weren't lounging around on airfields. They flew a lot of miles.

It isn't really high-G maneuvers that is the issue for a large plane like the B-36. It is the stress of take offs at or near maximum take-off weight, intense vibrations from the 6 Wasp-Major engines and a lightly built airframe to minimize weight and maximize altitude and range.

The SAC was busy with the B-36 but not nearly as busy as full combat use. Combat usage tends to put a lot of hours on airframes quickly. If you consider the flight profile of a B-36 mission from the East Coast of the US to Germany and back a single mission could put easily 40+ hours on the airframe of flying time. You also couple this with the high cost of the B-36 which even if we assume mass production would still be about 8-10 times more expensive than the B-17. This means for conventional bombing runs you cannot afford to have loss rates any where near what the B-17 suffered if you consider that each B-36 loss would be the equivalent in resources to 8-10 B-17's being lost. This means that either the B-36 airframes would be in service longer because of lower loses or the US is conducting a bombing campaign it cannot sustain. Not even mentioning that the B-36 was a beast to maintain and sucked up maintenance hours. Even working on it was difficult because of the size.

Of course all of this is not relevant if you are using Nuclear ordnance because even if you suffer a 25% loss rate on the sortie you have still taken out the country you are attacking.
 
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