My plan for a successful Sealion

[Hammerbolt]

Well that's odd. I believe the French were the ones who managed a successful crossing.

I was thinking of Napoleon.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

At the same time, the Japanese did seek German assurances of support when making the decision to go to war with the United States. From Ostkrieg, quote can be seen in the Google books version, "By early November, in fact, it was the Japanese who were seeking assurances of support from Germany in the event of a Japanese-American conflict, guarantees that Berlin was happy to provide. Ribbentrop not only assured the Japanese ambassador on 28 November that Germany would aid Japan in the event of war but also reaffirmed its commitment not to make a separate peace with the United States." If the Germans aren't giving the same sorts of guarantees but are in fact as the OP states saying the exact opposite and trying to discourage the Japanese from going to war with the US as much as possible, perhaps the Japanese high command's thinking is altered.

Japanese sought German assurances, but they were not basing their decision to go ahead on it. Case-in-point is your own source: Kido Butai had already set sail on November 26, two days before the meeting between Ribbentrop and the Japanese ambassador. Furthermore, the Japanese High Command had a very well-established record of ignoring advice they didn't like, so any German pressure to not attack the US would fall on deaf ears and only accomplish a souring of German-Japanese military relations. Their decision to attack the United States was, ultimately, out of German control.

Hitler did to some extent refrain from full prosecution of the Battle of the Atlantic for the sake of not provoking the US, though. Again from Ostkrieg, discussing the pre-Pearl Harbor period, "Hitler however, did not want to give the American president an incident he could use to justify intervention, as had happened in World War I, so he ordered his naval leaders, chomping at the bit for a confrontation with the United States, to avoid any provocations." And Goring seems to have been more cautious than Hitler based on his vehement opposition to invading the Soviet Union (which was generally thought to be easy). Without the need to impress Hitler, he might also refrain from the BoB given the unfavorable attrition rate and the fact that planes committed against Britain directly can't also be used in the Mediterranean.

Goering did not prosecute the war against Britain for the sake of impressing Hitler, he prosecuted the war against Britain to defeat Britain. That the attritional rates were unfavorable was a product of the Luftwaffe leadership being rank amateurs next to the Fighter Commands yet refusing to accept that fact.

Furthermore, no responsible Gernan military leader would refrain from prosecuting a submarine war against Britain seeing as how it is the only sound means the Germans have of bringing down Britain. A naval invasion, for all the fantasies you posit in the OP, is unworkable. The Germans would need to build a viable navy able to at a minimum escort their invasion force in the face of furious attacks by the Royal Navy as air power alone is not enough; build up the necessary amphibious capability through experience; then grind the British air defences in southern England down and win a tactical air campaign over the invasion area as they failed to do in 1940; then land and actually beat what would be by then a very large and well dug in British army. Since the British could match or beat the Germans in the air, and started with a vast naval lead, the British could probably maintain a healthy margin against any German build up.

That means the only other two options for being guaranteed to force Britain out of the war are Germany either gets the atom bomb first or the must successfully isolate and starve Britain with a naval campaign, most likely conducted by U-boats.

The former is impossible for reasons that are well documented among scholars of the WW2 German nuclear program. The latter is mutually exclusive with keeping the US out of the war and thus is self-defeating. The moment open war breaks out the Germans cannot possibly build the necessary superiority in forces. They cannot beat the Manhatten Project, they cannot invade England and defeat both the USN and the RN, supported by the USAAF and the RAF, and the British and American armies, and they cannot sink transports faster than the Americans and British can build them and hunt and sink U-boats. They may, without the distraction of the Eastern Front, be able to more successfully resist an Allied invasion of the continent, but they cannot under any circumstances triumph in an offensive war themselves at this point.

Of the German strategic leadership in 1940, precisely none showed any inkling of any of the above. Hitler sought to post-pone confrontation against the US, but he hardly attempted to avoid it. He recognized that a prolonged war against Britain would also inherently suck in the US. That this would inevitably result in German defeat was not something that he appears to have recognized.

When General Beck wrote on his resignation that "a final national-socialist victory is impossible", he knew what he was talking about. Germany's bid for continental dominance via military means was not only immoral, but impossible and ultimately ruinous.

 

[CrimsonKing]

Perhaps the USSR can supply the necessary raw materials, though we might want to check the capacity of the railroads and the break in gauge. However, this won't magically increase German or European production capacity, especially as the more it provides, the more it wants in return. Even Germany can't build an infinite number of machine tools, though I note they did turn out generic multi-purpose ones. Moreover, while Goering may be capable of a Britain First strategy he is about the last person you want making decisions of an economic or industrial nature. Is he capable of creating an early ECSC that utilises non-German capacity to mutual benefit? If not, expect some foot dragging by industrialists throughout Europe. And sabotage.

L-L is an interesting one in this scenario. Without the BofA or BofB the UK has less need of it - it can import more from the Sterling Zone by basically issuing IOUs. It can increase manufacturing capacity in the Dominions and India just as Germany can do so in Europe. US firms could open satellites in Canada or Australia if the UK can't buy from them directly with USD. It may still be to the US advantage, both strategically and economically, to do something like L-L, even if on a smaller scale. Of course, should Japan misstep in the Pacific the US is likely to spurt Britain even more enthusiastically.

With logistics hampering any Axis build up in North Africa until mid-1941 or later it seems unlikely the Axis can do more than glower impotently from Cyrenaica or at best El Alamein. Maybe an advance through Greece to Crete and Cyprus would be a better option, but could it muster an amphibious capability sufficient to then invade Palestine or Egypt. Both of which could be
reinforced from India very easily.

And, without Hitler, and maybe without the Holocaust - what is to stop the UK agreeing a compromise peace long before 1945?

Soviet supply of raw materials wouldn't magically increase production capacity in the Grossraum, but it would allow the latter to utilize the production capacity it did have prior to the war and the blockade. Increased production capacity would come at merely the normal rate of economic growth. Goring's economic decision making did have harmful effects in OTL, but that was in a context of him competing with other agencies which also controlled the armaments effort. As Fuhrer its likely he leaves such detailed day-to-day management to others. It's to factor out the effects of the BoB and BoA that I used the 1944 production numbers in the OP. British defenses in North Africa are going to be weaker without the BEF, and would not be enough to stop a Panzergruppe. I agree that with a neutral US and the USSR in the Axis, Britain would probably agree to a peace deal by 1945, it's just that for the sake of the scenario in the OP it needs to be assumed that the war goes on until then for some reason.

The relationship between the Atar and the BMW 003 is somewhat opaque - it didn't power a frontline aircraft for a decade after the war, and clearly had at least some technology transfer from the UK. The issue isn't so much that the engines won't work, but that they have fundamental problems that the Whittle design didn't and are limited in how far they can be developed. The upshot is that the British engines are liable to be somewhat better, and in any case the poor turbine inlet temperatures which affected all engines at the time (particularly the German ones due to the lack of superalloys) limit their range making it very hard for German jets of the era to be effective in a re-fought BoB.

The Ouragan first flew in 1949 and entered service in 1952. And according to the Wikipedia's article on the Atar, "Őstrich was secretly approached by French DGER agents with an offer to take up further design of the 003 in France... Östrich instead accepted the French invitation, and by September had been set up at the former Dornier factories in Rickenbach in the French Zone. Here they were soon joined by other former BMW engineers... They restarted work on the BMW 018 (an engine similar to the 003) layout, which preceded the Rolls-Royce Avon in technology and power by a number of years." Without the need for massive AFV production, it's likely that the scarce materials the lack of which harmed their jet reliability in OTL can be provided. And the ME 262 and Meteor had about the same range at around 600 miles.

Yeah, well, opinion is very mixed on the subject and it needs to be remembered that many of the decisions were made in the light of the US decision to enter the war, with the MAUD report circulating at a time when the US were getting more and more involved in the war. In the scenario you're positing, the US isn't going to be nearly as involved and this will result in a very different set of decisions from the British.

Based on the extent to which the programs were substantially independent even in OTL and that the lack of coordination hampered the Tube Alloys program, it's very possible that the British wouldn't get a bomb by 1945, which was all I was saying.

That doesn't help much - the issue isn't raw materials but shipyards. LCTs and LSTs require specialist labour and equipment to build, and that's something the Germans are very poorly supplied with.

The Germans would have the shipyards historically used for building submarines available since there's no Battle of the Atlantic. Furthermore, these aren't the kind of shipyards which construct battleships, it's very possible more could be constructed in time if they're begun in 1940. The shipbuilding of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Norway was hardly insignificant, and it should be remembered that the Pacific and European theaters competed heavily for landing craft, whereas the Germans are essentially concentrating their production on one operation (with perhaps minor exceptions in the Mediterranean in 1940-41).

Umm... no. Air forces are by definition very mobile, the RAF could potentially (as was planned in OTL) withdraw north of London for a while and then head back when the invasion starts. To prevent that, they need to be able to engage them everywhere over the UK - there simply aren't enough critical targets (any, really) that the RAF must defend to the south of London.

If the RAF withdraws, that leaves its airfields and installations in the south completely open to being bombed at will. In any case, the Germans probably will construct a P-51 analogue without the need to concentrate on developing interceptors.

That's still a very limited number of aircraft compared to land-based air. That's relevant when considering how well the RN would manage against a hostile air presence.

By that point in the war, the Japanese had lost all their experienced pilots, were using mostly obsolete aircraft, and were massively outnumbered. Even then, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of kamikazes which were shot down before hitting their targets were shot down by aircraft and not AA fire, and that's not taking into account that a substantial portion of the latter happened at very close range as the kamikazes neared their targets in a way normal aircraft obviously wouldn't. What's far more relevant is the experience of every surface force throughout the war which tried to deal with well-trained and well-equipped attacks from the air without their own air support.

Japanese sought German assurances, but they were not basing their decision to go ahead on it. Case-in-point is your own source: Kido Butai had already set sail on November 26, two days before the meeting between Ribbentrop and the Japanese ambassador. Their decision to attack the United States was, ultimately, out of German control.

There's no way you can know that the Japanese would have gone through with the attack absent German encouragement and support and there's no way I can know they wouldn't have. The reason you're saying they would have is because you want the Axis to always do the stupid thing. And while the Kido Butai sailed before that specific meeting, it did so in the context of many other German assurances of support and could always have been recalled. Nowhere did I claim that the Germans "controlled" Japanese decision-making.

Goering did not prosecute the war against Britain for the sake of impressing Hitler, he prosecuted the war against Britain to defeat Britain.

The decision to launch the BoB was Hitler's, not Goring's. Goring carried it out but it was ultimately not his call. Raeder was warning from the beginning that Sealion was impossible anytime soon even if the Luftwaffe succeeded in obtaining air superiority, but Hitler insisted on the LW attacking, probably because he was already seriously thinking about invading the Soviet Union and felt constrained by time. Goring was adamantly opposed to the war with the USSR on the other hand and might very well have refrained from the BoB because, even if he wrongly believed the LW to be able to obtain air superiority over southern England, there's no point because invading is impossible anyway and there are easier pickings in the Mediterranean.

That the attritional rates were unfavorable was a product of the Luftwaffe leadership being rank amateurs next to the Fighter Commands yet refusing to accept that fact.

Actually, it was a product of entirely tangible advantages which accrued to the defender. Exactly the same thing happened in reverse later in the war when the Wallied air forces attacked into German airspace without adequate fighter escort.

Furthermore, no responsible Gernan military leader would refrain from prosecuting a submarine war against Britain seeing as how it is the only sound means the Germans have of bringing down Britain. A naval invasion, for all the fantasies you posit in the OP, is unworkable. The Germans would need to build a viable navy able to at a minimum escort their invasion force in the face of furious attacks by the Royal Navy as air power alone is not enough; build up the necessary amphibious capability through experience; then grind the British air defences in southern England down and win a tactical air campaign over the invasion area as they failed to do in 1940; then land and actually beat what would be by then a very large and well dug in British army. Since the British could match or beat the Germans in the air, and started with a vast naval lead, the British could probably maintain a healthy margin against any German build up.

That means the only other two options for being guaranteed to force Britain out of the war are Germany either gets the atom bomb first or the must successfully isolate and starve Britain with a naval campaign, most likely conducted by U-boats.

The former is impossible for reasons that are well documented among scholars of the WW2 German nuclear program. The latter is mutually exclusive with keeping the US out of the war and thus is self-defeating. The moment open war breaks out the Germans cannot possibly build the necessary superiority in forces. They cannot beat the Manhatten Project, they cannot invade England and defeat both the USN and the RN, supported by the USAAF and the RAF, and the British and American armies, and they cannot sink transports faster than the Americans and British can build them and hunt and sink U-boats. They may, without the distraction of the Eastern Front, be able to more successfully resist an Allied invasion of the continent, but they cannot under any circumstances triumph in an offensive war themselves at this point.

Of the German strategic leadership in 1940, precisely none showed any inkling of any of the above. Hitler sought to post-pone confrontation against the US, but he hardly attempted to avoid it.

When General Beck wrote on his resignation that "a final national-socialist victory is impossible", he knew what he was talking about. Germany's bid for continental dominance via military means was not only immoral, but impossible and ultimately ruinous.

This whole thing is one gigantic red herring designed to get around the fact that you're completely wrong that the German leadership (Hitler, specifically) didn't take into account possible US reaction in conducting the U-boat war (at least prior to Pearl Harbor, and the decision to first encourage Japan to attack the US and then follow through and declare war on the US directly was basically Hitler's alone). On the contrary, because of fear of provoking the US, he did restrain his naval commanders who were as Fritz says "chomping at the bit" to confront the US. Such restraint was clearly no small matter when the massively increased rate of U-boat sinkings in the months after open US-German war began and the KM was free to be as aggressive as it wanted is considered. And Goring seems to have been much more cautious than Hitler based on his opposition to the war with the USSR which almost everyone believed would be another quick victory. Also, the two underlined parts of mutually contradictory. A submarine campaign against Britain can't be "responsible" if it also means bringing the US into the war.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

There's no way you can know that the Japanese would have gone through with the attack absent German encouragement and support and there's no way I can know they wouldn't have.

Of course we can't know in the sense of absolute certainty. But what we can do is look at the actual patterns of behavior and draw conclusions from them. That's one of the things that make good alternate history possible. If you want to stick to what can be strictly known, then you're on the wrong forum. On a quite consistent basis, the Japanese decided on a course of action and then sought German support. If German support was not forthcoming, the Japanese shrugged and carried on anyways. In the end, the Germans have no influence over what the Japanese did.

The reason you're saying they would have is because you want the Axis to always do the stupid thing.

And the reason you're saying that is because you clearly don't understand how either the Japanese or Nazi leadership actually thought. You attribute them totally ahistoric mindset as well as picture-perfect hindsight, all the while ignoring that if the Germans or Japanese had as much strategic sense, they wouldn't have started WW2. Any competent strategic planning group would have looked at the German or Japanese war aims in 1939 or 1940 or 1941 and gone "Don't bloody do it, we'll lose!" And indeed, their competent strategists did say just that. And in response, the leadership didn't just ignore them: they basically fired them.

Nowhere did I claim that the Germans "controlled" Japanese decision-making.

You just claim a level of influence upon Japanese decision makers which they never actually exhibited.

The decision to launch the BoB was Hitler's, not Goring's. Goring carried it out but it was ultimately not his call. Raeder was warning from the beginning that Sealion was impossible anytime soon even if the Luftwaffe succeeded in obtaining air superiority, but Hitler insisted on the LW attacking, probably because he was already seriously thinking about invading the Soviet Union and felt constrained by time. Goring was adamantly opposed to the war with the USSR on the other hand and might very well have refrained from the BoB because, even if he wrongly believed the LW to be able to obtain air superiority over southern England, there's no point because invading is impossible anyway and there are easier pickings in the Mediterranean.

No, there's still something of a point to continued air action ITTL, at least in the eyes of the German leadership: the belief that strategic air bombardment could induce the enemies surrender. It was essentially the basis on which the Blitz. Such a belief is incorrect, but they don't know that. And the Germans easily have the surplus aircraft to carry it out. So basically ITTL's Battle of Britain will be OTLs Blitz.

Actually, it was a product of entirely tangible advantages which accrued to the defender. Exactly the same thing happened in reverse later in the war when the Wallied air forces attacked into German airspace without adequate fighter escort.

A revealingly oversimplistic analysis. The considerable advantages the RAF enjoyed could have been squandered by a poor commander - as Leigh-Mallory showed by getting his fighters slaughtered over France in 1941 and '42 (and in '41 after taking command of 11 Group, Mallory failed at several basic interception drills that would probably have lead to his fields getting seriously mauled had they happened in August 1940) - but under Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park that was never going to happen. The British won because they approached the battle with a brilliant, methodical, and almost unbeatable plan while the Germans dove in with only ad hoc plans and wishful thinking. Incidentally, this is also the story of basically how the Allies ultimately won the war as a whole.

This whole thing is one gigantic red herring designed to get around the fact that you're completely wrong

And this whole thing is one gigantic red herring to get around the fact that you're completely wrong that Goering would be so restrained as to not utilize the U-Boats or be able to conduct Operation Sea Lion in 1945.

On the contrary, because of fear of provoking the US, he did restrain his naval commanders who were as Fritz says "chomping at the bit" to confront the US.

Yet the U-Boat war went on to the point that by the latter-part of 1941 USN vessels and U-Boats were routinely shooting at each other. Such restraint! (I'd put a rolls eye emoticon here, but the new one sucks).

 

[CrimsonKing]

Of course we can't know in the sense of absolute certainty. But what we can do is look at the actual patterns of behavior and draw conclusions from them. That's one of the things that make good alternate history possible. If you want to stick to what can be strictly known, then you're on the wrong forum. On a quite consistent basis, the Japanese decided on a course of action and then sought German support. If German support was not forthcoming, the Japanese shrugged and carried on anyways. In the end, the Germans have no influence over what the Japanese did.

And the reason you're saying that is because you clearly don't understand how either the Japanese or Nazi leadership actually thought. You attribute them totally ahistoric mindset as well as picture-perfect hindsight, all the while ignoring that if the Germans or Japanese had as much strategic sense, they wouldn't have started WW2. Any competent strategic planning group would have looked at the German or Japanese war aims in 1939 or 1940 or 1941 and gone "Don't bloody do it, we'll lose!" And indeed, their competent strategists did say just that. And in response, the leadership didn't just ignore them: they basically fired them.

You just claim a level of influence upon Japanese decision makers which they never actually exhibited.

As a simplification, we can say that the Japanese took three major actions which led to war with the Wallies. The first was when they invaded China in 1937. The second was when they occupied French Indochina in the fall of 1940, eventually triggering the Wallied embargo. The third was when they actually did the strike south in December of 1941. The first action was clearly independent of anything Germany said or did. It should be noted that unlike the second two, the invasion of China was conducted against a clearly divided, militarily weak, backward country. The second, however, happened in the aftermath of the Fall of France. I don't think anyone would argue that the Japanese would have invaded French Indochina had France not fallen to Germany. The third happened in the aftermath of the Wallied embargo, yes, but also in the context of repeated assurances from the Germans that they were in board with war with the US, and, moreover, in a context in which the US had clearly signaled that, if it were to enter the war, it would do so with a strategy focused on the defeat of Germany. This is particularly important given that the Japanese strategy was to dig in and try to convince the US to settle for a negotiated peace. So it actually is possible to see Japanese actions as being heavily influenced by the Germans, in that they tended to act against formidable Western powers after their German ally had already put itself in the position of taking the lead against them.

No, there's still something of a point to continued air action ITTL, at least in the eyes of the German leadership: the belief that strategic air bombardment could induce the enemies surrender. It was essentially the basis on which the Blitz. Such a belief is incorrect, but they don't know that. And the Germans easily have the surplus aircraft to carry it out. So basically ITTL's Battle of Britain will be OTLs Blitz.

While that may have been the reasoning behind the Blitz, it also occurred in the context of intense frustration at the losses which had been taken so far and a desire to have something to show for them (remember the "working towards the Fuhrer" tendency). Goring's thinking had been influenced in a cautious direction by the losses taken in France, from page 45 of Strategy for Defeat, "Parenthetically, the losses in France directly influenced Goring's thinking. He demanded that the Luftwaffe maintain its fighting strength as much as possible and not allow its personnel and materiel to be diminished because of overcommitments." With this kind of attitude, and with Raeder from the beginning making clear how impossible Sealion is, he might take the cautious approach in the absence of the need to impress his boss.

A revealingly oversimplistic analysis. The considerable advantages the RAF enjoyed could have been squandered by a poor commander - as Leigh-Mallory showed by getting his fighters slaughtered over France in 1941 and '42 (and in '41 after taking command of 11 Group, Mallory failed at several basic interception drills that would probably have lead to his fields getting seriously mauled had they happened in August 1940) - but under Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park that was never going to happen. The British won because they approached the battle with a brilliant, methodical, and almost unbeatable plan while the Germans dove in with only ad hoc plans and wishful thinking. Incidentally, this is also the story of basically how the Allies ultimately won the war as a whole.

So would you be willing to give similar praise to the Luftwaffe commanders who held out in the air over Germany for so long against overwhelming odds?

And this whole thing is one gigantic red herring to get around the fact that you're completely wrong that Goering would be so restrained as to not utilize the U-Boats or be able to conduct Operation Sea Lion in 1945.

What we're debating.

Yet the U-Boat war went on to the point that by the latter-part of 1941 USN vessels and U-Boats were routinely shooting at each other. Such restraint! (I'd put a rolls eye emoticon here, but the new one sucks).

And yet the restraints Hitler put on the U-boats were enough to prevent any of the shooting incidents from escalating into war, which is the point. Again, comparing U-boat sinkings in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and open US-German war to those before makes clear that Hitler was actually giving up a substantial amount of potential damage to British shipping with the restraint he did excercize.

 

[What if]

Not responding to anything specific but just as a general comment whilst Gobbles and a few theory could have gone without attempting to take on the USSR Hitler thought his mission in life was to acquire living space in Russia for the Aryan people so I think you'll need a POD of Hitler dying.

 

[CalBear]

Not responding to anything specific but just as a general comment whilst Gobbles and a few theory could have gone without attempting to take on the USSR Hitler thought his mission in life was to acquire living space in Russia for the Aryan people so I think you'll need a POD of Hitler dying.

The difficulty there, of course, being that he was the only personality strong enough to keep Goring, Goebbels, and Himmler (and possibly Speer and Hess as well) from starting a power struggle that would have destroyed the Reich from within.

Even if Goring managed to take over and keep the rest suppressed (and good luck with that, considering Himmler had the SS) he had no real power base, worse, for all his posturing he was the classic XO, ruthless, but not really the Man. He also was outright stupid regarding air power. He believed that air power could do anything. Throw in the whole opiate addict thing and the Reich falls apart.

 

[CrimsonKing]

While some kind of power struggle would probably have ensued had Hitler died, back in 1940 Himmler and the SS weren't what they would become later on, and Goring hadn't yet fallen into the disfavor which he later would. He also retained some amount of popularity with the public IIRC. If he could get the support of the armed forces he probably could consolidate his position and prevent things from getting out of control. Regarding his proclaimed beliefs about what the Luftwaffe could do, again he said those things in a context of the "working towards the Fuhrer" dynamic which was the product of Hitler's personality and tended to cause subordinates to make ever-larger claims of what they were capable of doing. His opposition to both the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the invasion of Poland in 1939 (I haven't found anything specifically on his opinion on declaring war against the US, but it is known that the decision was taken by Hitler more or less on his own and Goring's "refrigerators and razorblades" comment was said after the fact. Some sources actually attribute it to Hitler, in which case, if Goring did say it at all, he was probably just parroting Hitler) is indicative of someone whose instincts were fundamentally cautious and risk averse. As for his addiction, IIRC it started because of attempts to contain chronic pain which was the result of a bullet wound sustained during the Beer Hall Putsch. We could go with a POD of that particular bullet missing and the addiction never getting started as a result.