How long could Nazi Germany have held on?

Let us say that the remains of the German government decide to obey Hitler and never surrender ordering German troops to fight to the end and then go underground. Now I know that Werwolf was doomed to fail and still will but how long could the war have continued? Days? Weeks? Also what would be the aftermath of Germany never properly surrendering and most of the generals and Nazis who would end up at Nuremburg killing themselves rather than refuse to surrender.
 
It depends slightly on when the PoD is. If Germany scores a quick victory at Stalingrad, then Fall Blau (Case Blue), their operation to capture the Caucasus' oil at Grozy and Baku, might well succeed. If not, they can still head for the Caspian Sea and cut off the Soviets from Baku which has the same effect. In that event we could see a Soviet surrender ( a la Brest-Litovsk, Version 2.0). Then we got a German dominated Europe vs. the Anglo-American allies. With Caucasian oil, a free hand in Europe, resources from all of Europe, this could be a very bloody affair. Remember the production increases in production under Speer in '43/'44? Imagine that with the labour force of France and the Low Countries, Romanian oil, Ukrainian coal and steel, Soviet grain and an ocean of slave labour. The bulk of the Luftwaffe can now be transferred to the west causing the bombing campaign to be much less effective due to high losses. I'd say that any invasion of 'Fortress Europe' (which is a proper name ITTL IMO) will be a bloody failure except if you try the periphery of Nazi influence. The Americans might well say 'to hell with it' and wait until they got nukes. In this scenario, Germany holds on until August/September 1945 and maybe even into 1946 and 1947 although by then Germany would be a radioactive wasteland. Nuking Germany might well fail in some attempts with a more potent Luftwaffe and all those AA guns not in the east ITTLl, but in the end it won't help.

If we're talking 1943, the Nazis could opt for Von Manstein's 'backband blow' instead of Citadel. That involved luring the Red Army after the desperately reforming Sixth Army in, say, May 1943, into the Ukraine. Von Manstein would then move south from Kharkov east of the Don and press the entire wing of the Red Army against the Sea of Azov, losing Stalin one million men and a lot of tanks. This doesn't knock out the USSR but likely means the Soviets won't reach German territory in 1945. They'll likely reach pre-1939 or 1941 borders. End result => nukage ensues.

In the event of a late PoD (1944/45), Hitler could avoid the Budapest offensive. If we butterfly some bad weather at the Battle of the Bulge, the Wehrmacht might be able to seize those much needed oil supplies and set back the Allied approach for a few weeks or maybe even months. This is only delaying the inevitable and fighting to the end = nukage as well here.

I suppose you meant a guerrilla resistance. There was a plan for a so-called 'Alpenfestung' in Bavaria and Austria. Hitler was somewhat enthusiastic about it in 1945 but the creation of the foundations for a guerrilla resistance by the SS and Wehrmacht remnants would have to be laid earlier (1943?) and I imagine that with lack of local support, except in Soviet occupied areas, resistance would end soon and Hitler would die in the Alps somewhere, commit suicide or get caught and put on trail. Except for East Germany, I don't see resistance last any longer than beyond the first 3-4 years. In the East Germany, especially under harsh Stalinist rule, resistance might draw more support and last well into the 50s and even 60s like it did in the Baltic states although I imagine guerrilla warfare would be exchanged for plain terrorism at some point.
 
Well, the Germans did have a chance at that. It' just that they acted incompetently. For instance, instead of bombing Zhukov's 76mm artillery batteries on the eastern bank of the Volga, they began bombing the crap out of Stalingrad itself and subsequently didn't cross the Volga.

Either a victory at Stalingrad or bypass it alltogether. It's strategic importance was and is somewhat overrated. If it fell, it would just have been another city on the list of fallen cities like Kiev or Smolensk.
 
Recall the reason the US didn't drop the bomb on Germany was that they were already defeated so might as well use it against Japan for a variety of reasons. Assuming the Manhattan goes in OTL, Germany wouldn't last past August 1945.
 
Let us say that the remains of the German government decide to obey Hitler and never surrender ordering German troops to fight to the end and then go underground. Now I know that Werwolf was doomed to fail and still will but how long could the war have continued? Days? Weeks? Also what would be the aftermath of Germany never properly surrendering and most of the generals and Nazis who would end up at Nuremburg killing themselves rather than refuse to surrender.

People don't work that way.

If resistance is hopeless people don't offer any.

War is a legal condition; technically, Russia and Japan are at war because they never signed a peace treaty.

Germany can not continue to offer "Conventional Resistance" on the ground long after May 1945--most of the country is occupied. I suppose Norway and Denmark might hold out for a while, but to what end? Home is gone.

There's nothing left to fight for. Hitler's killed himself--how can the people of Germany expect to fight to the end when he isn't willing to do it himself? In short, this scenario goes into people's mentality and is probably a better ASB question.
 
I imagine the Germans could have used their poison gas to sterilize Poland, creating a dead zone through which the Red Army couldn't pass. And they might have forced the Western Allies to back off by threatening to retaliate against any nuclear strike by bombarding the UK with poison gas with their V-2 missiles.
As far as continued resistance after the surrender, there were indeed Nazi diehards who refused to quit fighting; the last of them were hunted down and killed a few years after the war. Their insurgency failed because the occupiers weren't as lenient as our troops are today, in dealing with the Afghan and Iraqi terrorists. Anyone caught fighting after the surrender, or giving aid to such persons, was summarily shot. In the Soviet zone, the Red Army was even more brutal than the Western Allies, executing many hostages in reprisal for acts of resistance. And you have to remember that there was no outside power providing aid to the German insurgents. This made their campaign hopeless.
 
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Gents, from the OP I'd assume that the POD was in the last days of the war ITTL, i.e. early May 1945... not 1942 or whenever.

Presuming there was no formal surrender and that even the most fanatical Nazis decided to go to ground, it could be anything up to five years before all armed resistance ceased. Obviously the guerrillas would be confined to remote areas of forest and mountains and their survival would depend largely on the amount of effort put into tracking them down. The effort would be in comparison to the scale of actions carried out by the guerrillas.

The nearest corellations I can think of are the Republicans of the SCW who waged a low key resistance to the Nationalist regime in Spain, they lasted into the 1950's. The Partisans in Poland during WW2 managed to last until the Soviets arrived.
 
People don't work that way.

If resistance is hopeless people don't offer any.

War is a legal condition; technically, Russia and Japan are at war because they never signed a peace treaty.

Germany can not continue to offer "Conventional Resistance" on the ground long after May 1945--most of the country is occupied. I suppose Norway and Denmark might hold out for a while, but to what end? Home is gone.

There's nothing left to fight for. Hitler's killed himself--how can the people of Germany expect to fight to the end when he isn't willing to do it himself? In short, this scenario goes into people's mentality and is probably a better ASB question.

I agree, but lets say the offical PoD is late March 1945 when Hitler leaves his Bunker and relocates to Norway. The German radio lies about him being in Berlin and when it falls they say that Hitler heroicly escaped to an undisclosed location. Hitler refuses to surrender declaring that the German Army wil never surrender and after Germany is occupied the Nazis will go underground.

How long can they hold out?
 
I imagine the Germans could have used their poison gas to sterilize Poland, creating a dead zone through which the Red Army couldn't pass. And they might have forced the Western Allies to back off by threatening to retaliate against any nuclear strike by bombarding the UK with poison gas with their V-2 missiles.

Poison gas, especially the most common stuff available in World War 2, isn't nearly as effective as you think it is. It doesn't stick around long and it can be defended against with gasmasks. After all, Britain declared war in 1939 fully expecting gas to be used and issuing gasmasks to civilians.

Permanently sterilising an entire country with gas isn't even remotely possible today, let alone in 1944. And hitting London with a few poison gas V-2s just means gas and nukes get lobbed into German cities with twice as much force.
 
I agree, but lets say the offical PoD is late March 1945 when Hitler leaves his Bunker and relocates to Norway. The German radio lies about him being in Berlin and when it falls they say that Hitler heroicly escaped to an undisclosed location. Hitler refuses to surrender declaring that the German Army wil never surrender and after Germany is occupied the Nazis will go underground.

How long can they hold out?

A few extra weeks at best.
 
Don't invade the USSR and then do what IMO was an even dumber thing of declaring war on the US. Then I think we would of seen a settlement between the UK and Germany about 1943. If that had happened we still might be looking at a National Socialist ruled Germany into the '90s. But too many butterflies to acount for
 
Don't invade the USSR and then do what IMO was an even dumber thing of declaring war on the US. Then I think we would of seen a settlement between the UK and Germany about 1943. If that had happened we still might be looking at a National Socialist ruled Germany into the '90s. But too many butterflies to acount for

And you think a guy as paranoid as Stalin would let such a powerful Nazi Germany just sit there? His army would be ready in 1942/43. In Germany itself, many people were of the opinion that the Red threat had to go even if they didn't like Hitler's racial theories.

And you'd need to remove Hitler from power because the conquest of Lebenraum to the east was integral to his ideology, ingrained into his thinking or so to speak.
 
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