Could Hitler Of Won The War If...

Saphroneth

Banned
Why did the jews go on the train? Because they would be shot if they did not comply.
So your view is that you're going to have Hitler force the Jewish physicists to help make an atom bomb under pain of death?
Some of them would rather die. (Actually, quite a lot of them left the country in the 1930s.)
 
I suppose I'm mainly having a hard time reining in my disbelief that someone could speak so authoritatively about WW2 while being so... well, this..

I understand. It might be an idea for a mod to lock this thread until our newest member has had a chan e to read a few threads.
 
So your view is that you're going to have Hitler force the Jewish physicists to help make an atom bomb under pain of death?
Some of them would rather die. (Actually, quite a lot of them left the country in the 1930s.)
It also didn't stop the slaves at Buchenwald and Auschwitz from making defective weapons. I remember hearing a Holocaust survivor speak and she mentioned that the Americans who liberated her from Bergen-Belsen thanked the Jews for sabotaging the shells.
 
It also didn't stop the slaves at Buchenwald and Auschwitz from making defective weapons. I remember hearing a Holocaust survivor speak and she mentioned that the Americans who liberated her from Bergen-Belsen thanked the Jews for sabotaging the shells.

Imagine the potentiality of sabotage of an atomic device. Nazis would never allow Jews around it, if they did they would not be Nazis.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Here is a quick rundown on how we use terms on this board.


TL: Time Line.
OTL: Original Time Line. What actually happened.
ATL: Alternate Time Line.
TTL: This/That Time Line. (e.g. "so TTL the Americans elected Alf Landon")
Alternate History - an ATL focused on plausible consequences. Sometimes phrased as WI, What If: "WI Rommel was killed at Alam Haifa?"
AHC: Alternate History Challenge - seeing what changes could produce the consequence you're after. "AHC: Keep Hawaii independent until WWI"

Alternate History: examination of a plausible TL.
Alternative History: derogatory term, meaning a story where plausibility is not particularly important. One might say "Turtledove's books are kind of more alternative history".
ASB: Alien Space Bats. Refers to either:
1) A TL in which literal magic, alien invasion, or other outlandish events take place.
2) A story in a non-Earth setting with fantastical elements. (I've got one of these! Saruman of Many Devices, building a rifle-armed force of Warg-riding Uruks. It's on hiatus, I'm afraid.)
3) Derogatory term for something so unlikely that intervention by (1) seems more likely, or something that would require them to help out. The term was actually coined to refer to how Sealion is so incredibly unlikely that it would take alien bats from outer space coming down and helping the Nazis in order to have it succeed.
 
No I said invading the Soviet Union in 1942 in the alternate reality.

Invading Russia is generally put in the strategy box marked Bad Ideas, invading in 1941 mind you minimised the bad ideas for a couple of reasons.

1: Frontier fortifications thanks to Stalin going for the Molotov-Ribbentrop we'll back stab each other later agreement the borders of the USSR moved west. Stalin being a dictator and not a general officer decided he needed to hold on to all this land and not use it against an invader as a trip so he decided to uproot the Soviets existing frontier fortifications and move them west.

In June 1941 the work is in the middle of being done by May 1942 it is likely mostly complete.

2: Headquarters staffs Stalin being a master of ruling in a state of political fear had decided to kill almost all the Red Army's senior commanders and their staffs.

3 Soviet marshals out of 5
13 of the 15 field army commanders
8 out of 9 fleet admirals and admirals grade I
50 of the 57 corps commanders
154 of the 186 divisional commanders

All 16 army level political commissars
25 of the 28 corps commisars
58 of the 64 divisional commissars

all 11 vice-commissars of defence
98 of the 108 members of the Supreme Military Soviet

Upwards of forty thousand officers permanently dismissed, imprisoned or shot.

In 1939 Stalin learned that the Army he had left was not that good and decided to allow reforms to go ahead, this was in part a cause of the organisational chaos afflicting Soviets arms in 1941, by 1942 officers will have had a whole extra year in order to find where all their soldiers and their kit are actually at and started on working out what they can do with it.

3: Economic, under various economic arrangements the Germans were importing an awful lot of their war materials as well as food from or via the USSR, knowing they were going to invade in 1941 they had deferred the majority of their payments for these goods until later that year...waiting until 1942 means handing over a lot of stuff to the Soviets or...not having the resources with which to invade the Soviets as they stop making deliveries.

Oh and welcome hope you keep going despite the baptism of fire, the only way you expose your unknown unknowns is to stumble across them and that gives you an opportunity to exchange them for knowledge :D
 
Imagine the potentiality of sabotage of an atomic device. Nazis would never allow Jews around it, if they did they would not be Nazis.

The German scientists which actually worked for the nuclear weapon program mostly weren't that keen on the Nazis and their lectures/fundraising bids were called things like 'applications of atom splitting', not 'how to make a big bomb to kill lots of people'
 
If I may, Seapony, I think the sticking point here is your quest for plausibility. None of the things you have suggested are plausible and you've been provided 5 pages worth of reasoning why.

But if you just want to go balls to the wall, shits and giggles AH, that's what the ASB forum is for. In there, you can do whatever you like, give Hitler a crystal ball, hell give him mecha and kaiju, whatever floats your boat. Plausibility is hard graft man, and the walls of reality don't bend for anyone.
 

Sycamore

Banned
If I may, Seapony, I think the sticking point here is your quest for plausibility. None of the things you have suggested are plausible and you've been provided 5 pages worth of reasoning why.

But if you just want to go balls to the wall, shits and giggles AH, that's what the ASB forum is for. In there, you can do whatever you like, give Hitler a crystal ball, hell give him mecha and kaiju, whatever floats your boat. Plausibility is hard graft man, and the walls of reality don't bend for anyone.

Check out his contribution to the chat thread about the Church Shooting in Charleston- his only other contribution to this site thus far apart from this thread- and it'll soon become extremely obvious what SeaPony's motives and views are. He'll be gone within a day at most.
 
You're so lucky, Seapony

On the first five threads I started, I received six responses total. :(
To be fair, my first two were garbage.
 
The answers are:

1) No, and
2) Please consider reading a book about the Second World War's history before thinking about ways to change it.
 
In an alternate reality. ALTERNATE. You can still hate someone and use them at the same time.

Why would Jewish scientists agree to be used? Why wouldn't they sabotage Nazi efforts? The Nazis are going to kill them all eventually anyways.
 
Where do they get the Uranium?

Well, one supposes, from the Protectorate. There were mines.

Naturally, developing the sites to increase the output and digging out the amounts of raw ore needed for a couple of bombs would be a massive investment.

Then they would need to refine the ore, and then to enrich it, and that would be a massive, massive investment. I think I've read somewhere that the Manhattan Project, at one point, was using up 10% of the CONUS electric power output.

It's just never happening, short of ASBs.
 
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