Is Nazi Victory ASB?

I think in theory they could have carved out their continental empire. On paper when you add up their fighting power, industrial quality and the like they could have conquered European Russia and held off the WAllies.
I think such comparisons merely underscore just how little chance Nazi Germany has.
 
I've wondered if the vaunted 'Mediterranean strategy' might not give them the best chance to win... no attack on Russia, get Spain and Turkey on their side, etc. If the Germans can capture Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal, I think Britain would sue for peace. Granted ,that's a tall order, but not as bad as taking on the UK/USSR/USA juggernaut...
 

JRScott

Banned
I believe you could have a German victory but not so much in the way you think that might not be ASB:

1. The Bomb on Hitler's plane in March 1943 Detonates killing him and his top aides. It failed to detonate in real life. This will transition Germany to a government that is more in favor of peace than continued war. Even Germany was a bit war weary.

2. Winston Churchill dies from a heart attack in December 1941 while visiting the White House or in December 1943 while visiting it. He had mild heart attacks on both instances but they could have been more severe and killed him (he also had pneumonia at the time of the 1943 heart attack).

3. FDR dies in mid '43 to late '43 from his various health problems, unfortunately FDR did good to cover up all his illness so I can't give a specific date, but it is possible. It would make Henry Wallace President, and he largely disagreed with much of how FDR had prosecuted the war, one reason he was replaced by Harry Truman on the 44 ticket. Wallace was very friendly to the Russians, more so than the British.

Remove those three men and you can have a peace. I believe it can be done without ASBing it as long as you stay within reason.
 
I've wondered if the vaunted 'Mediterranean strategy' might not give them the best chance to win... no attack on Russia, get Spain and Turkey on their side, etc. If the Germans can capture Gibraltar, Malta, and the Suez Canal, I think Britain would sue for peace. Granted ,that's a tall order, but not as bad as taking on the UK/USSR/USA juggernaut...

The Med strategy comes up quite often but I think it has insurmountable political and logistical problems. It's Italy's sphere of influence, North Africa lacks port capacity and railways and hope of bringing the UK to terms surely die after Pearl harbour.

In any case, the Nazi ideology requires using Russian land and resources for the final confrontation with the "home of international Jewry", the US. Put simply, the Nazis are always going to end up fighting the USSR and US. At most they can try to keep the UK neutral and fight the USSR and US separately, but, yeah, that's not very plausible...
 
I just see the whole Nazi Victory idea on pair with such ideas like Sealion succeding. What's your opinion?

An all-out Nazi victory is of extremely low probability to say the very least, but it does not require magic or suspension of known natural law. So no, by definition it is not ASB. However, the necessary pods would change the nature of the Nazi regime to such an extent that it would be unrecognizable, I think, rendering the question moot.

A limited victory of one stripe or another might be equally unlikely, given that "limited war" doesn't seem to have been in Hitler's vocabulary.
 
Victory for Nazi Germany....hmmm option are either....
1st - remove Britains support for Poland (One way to win)
2nd - Decisive defeat and capture of British and French force at Dunkirk.
3rd - (with previous preparations) I know I will get shot for this but..... the plans for the invasion after the landings for Sealion were good so provided the elements were correct for this a surrender would be in the offing.

Othewise no chance sorry!
 
I do find myself wondering here -- supposing the Nazis had successfully taken Leningrad and Stalingrad? With the Sovies cut off from the Baltic and the Urals (along with their oil), what's their next move if Germany decides to focus on holding their ground (instead of, say, throwing everything into a march on Moscow)?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I do find myself wondering here -- supposing the Nazis had successfully taken Leningrad and Stalingrad? With the Sovies cut off from the Baltic and the Urals (along with their oil), what's their next move if Germany decides to focus on holding their ground (instead of, say, throwing everything into a march on Moscow)?

We have thread on this. Someone is preppping to write a Leningrad falls in 1941 TL. One of the main benefits is to be able to use Leningrad as a port in 1942 to relieve issue with the railnetwork being overloaded. You also likely cut Murmansk. You free up German but not Finnish troops used around Leningrad.

Stalingrad will greatly oil supplies and Lend Lease trough Persia. The railnetwork east of the Volga is poor, but some can be moved through there. The best use of the Stalingrad bulge would be to bomb the Baku oilfields. Even if you take Stalingrad completely, you can easily be driven out in 1943, so it is a temp gain. We also have a thread on this one.
 
Regarding to a "Soviets invade first" scennario:

It was my understanding that until Normandy, they Soviets were heavily reliant on Ally supplies to keep their war effort going.

This is relevant because i'm wondering: if the Soviets invade first... would they even join the Allies? Would the Allies, instead give a respite to the Germans through a (maybe unspoken) truce, hoping to see Germans and Soviets destroy each other?
Because i am not entirely convinced that the Allies would be too friendly, on principle, to a friend of the Nazis who aggresively turns on them. They would have to assess which one of them (Nazis or Soviets) is the greater threat, first.

Also, i think that the Soviet generals at first were quite green, and their Deep Battle theory was requiring greater refinements. If these assumptions were true, the initial stages of the invasion, even if successful due to numbers, could be even a worse meat-grinder for the Soviets than the initial German invasion was IOTL. They could manage to even penetrate close to the German border, but it could be all phyrric victories, leaving them exposed for counterattack. Am i missing something?
 
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So it seems that any sort of nazi victory is very, very close to ASB, and victory in war against UK, USA and USSR as in OTL is pure ASB, do you agree?
 
So it seems that any sort of nazi victory is very, very close to ASB, and victory in war against UK, USA and USSR as in OTL is pure ASB, do you agree?

It's a contested point -- I'm still inclined to think the Nazis had some points (though none later than 1942), where, had they made different calls, would have given them a fairly decent chance of achieving their (albeit, horrifying and insane) wartime goals.
 
Beating the USSR is not ASB. In a one-front war the Nazis can beat the USSR, even if this one-front war materializes in early 1943 (before Kursk).

This means, that the Nazis need to make certain the US never joins the war in Europe and Great Britain accepts peace until early 1943.


Keeping the US out is doable with PODs in US politics attitude, less "incidents" in the Atlantic, no official Germany-Japan pact and no DoW on USA after Pearl Harbor.

Making Great Britain go for peace would require some of the following:
a) capture of the BEF
b) victory in N.Africa
c) capture of Malta
d) better show in the U-boat war (the tide turned in early/mid 1943 in OTL)
e) perhaps some uprising in Iraq/Iran/India of greater magnitude than in OTL?
f) no Churchill
g) better show in the air (air superiority over the channel), which would require an early POD in the mid 30s with other persons in charge of the air industry & luftwaffe.

It is important to know, that huge nazi successes/fotunes early in the war (points a&f&g) may mean, that Hitler unleashes the unmentionable sea mammal. In this case, achieving a nazi victory becomes very unprobable.
So the nazis need to perform better, but not exceptional.
 
The Nazis OTL performed exceptionally well, making them smash the BEF, or win in Africa, or take Malta, or do better in the Battle of the Atlantic, or do better in the air - let alone more than one of those - would be going from "exceptional" to "I'm not sure this is possible".

Not ASB per se, but the Nazis weren't facing incompetent opponents in Britain.
 
It is important to know, that huge nazi successes/fotunes early in the war (points a&f&g) may mean, that Hitler unleashes the unmentionable sea mammal. In this case, achieving a nazi victory becomes very unprobable.
So the nazis need to perform better, but not exceptional.

If you put the PoD in the mid-30s, you might as well make the Germans aware that in their war strategy they would eventually have to utterly defeat, or at least defuse the UK. With that in mind, they should be preparing for an amphibious invasion, readying their navy and airforces, making an alternate, non-ASB sea lion scenario.
 
If you put the PoD in the mid-30s, you might as well make the Germans aware that in their war strategy they would eventually have to utterly defeat, or at least defuse the UK. With that in mind, they should be preparing for an amphibious invasion, readying their navy and airforces, making an alternate, non-ASB sea lion scenario.

And how are they going to do that without provoking a Royal Navy and RAF response, again?
 
How complete a victory are we talking? Nazis establish hegemony over Europe and fight the allies to a bloody stalemate resulting in a Cold War type scenario? No, not ASB. Nazis ruling the entire world? Yes, ASB.

Japan winning, OTOH, is ASB, and Japan would most likely have to be thrown under the bus in any Nazi victory scenario.
 
And how are they going to do that without provoking a Royal Navy and RAF response, again?
The idea is that with an early enough PoD, possibly near Hitler's designation as Chancellor, where he realizes that he will not be able to seize continental power without Uk's opposition. So he gears the German military (including Navy and Air Force) towards a confrontation with the UK first, then go east.

Having Hitler to have this realization is, of course, unlikely. His true aspiration was the lebensraum to the east, mostly at the expense of the USSR, which noone in Europe was going to cry for. He also had no way to know that France and the UK would be willing to declare war over his attack against Poland, even if he suspected they could oppose it.

What about this other scenario? No occupied France.
From the start, Hitler had no territorial aspiration to the west. So what if he decides that occupying France is a fools errand? He could give Petáin's France all of its territory back, except for the Alsace-Lorraine, obviously, and keeping a few military observers to make sure the demilitarization is effective. Could such a benign outcome for France weaken UK's resolve to keep the war going? or might they conclude that it was meaningless?

I don't know, don't know enough about the personality of the British leaders, but the whole picture in December 1940 would be: the "whole" France independent, and at peace with Germany, Belgium and Holland "independent" too, as demilitarized satellites of Germany, Poland (the reason for the war) half occupied by Germany, but the other half by the USSR, and the UK only at war with Germany, a war where they can't do anything really to each other, having the channel in between. Under these circumstances, why would the British refuse to settle for the statu quo? for Poland, which is also occupied by the USSR?
 
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