Probability Check: Limited Axis Victory

No. It took three major powers because to defeat the Nazi by 1945. Two of them would maybe fight longer, but the issue would never be in doubt. Nazis lose either way. Each of their enemy alone could match and surpass the war making capacity of the Nazi Germany. Hell, the Soviets outproduced them in weapons in 1942 already.

The Nazi policy managed to alienate the entire world, to corner themselves in such way that it was impossible for them to realize the full economic capacity of the areas they conquered.

I think the statement that "the issue was never in doubt" is by no means realistic. On the contrary, the issue was in doubt even as it was! Without any of the 3 big powers, it is exponentially more difficult for the germans to be defeated.

How will a Normandy landing be going with the germans having at least TWICE or more troops and weapons opposing them (if the USSR is out)? Would they even manage to obtain air superiority over France (let alone Germany) with thousands more Luftwaffe aircraft in the fray?

How would the USSR be holding the germans back, without the UK (and later US) forcing them to divert ever more troops and resources in the West and Africa?

How will the US even get involved in Europe, if UK is out?
 
I think the statement that "the issue was never in doubt" is by no means realistic. On the contrary, the issue was in doubt even as it was! Without any of the 3 big powers, it is exponentially more difficult for the germans to be defeated.

How will a Normandy landing be going with the germans having at least TWICE or more troops and weapons opposing them (if the USSR is out)? Would they even manage to obtain air superiority over France (let alone Germany) with thousands more Luftwaffe aircraft in the fray?

How would the USSR be holding the germans back, without the UK (and later US) forcing them to divert ever more troops and resources in the West and Africa?

How will the US even get involved in Europe, if UK is out?

Haza!

Indeed, an Axis Victory is not impossible, just unlikely.
The only straight-up impossible Nazi Victory scenario I know of is Man In The High Castle. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese could directly control that much territory. Also, they drained the Mediterranean for farmland.
 
The argument that National Socialists' policy drove vast numbers of scientists to flee Germany and crippled the German scientific establishment to the point that a single man's single error was sufficient to wreck a major programme, and that this flaw was endemic to the German populist romantic-nationalist right, has not been satisfactorily answered.

Nor has the idea that the National Socialists are somehow going to conquer the Soviet Union in the first place when their logistics were outstretched enough even in OTL, depending on horses to travel vast stretches of land, hugely vulnerable to partisans cutting them if they got as far as in OTL (let alone far further as they would need to do to actually defeat the Soviet Union), given that the Third Reich sought to exterminate and enslave the entire Soviet population and therefore the Soviets had no incentive to surrender because there is no conceivable way fighting on could have produced an outcome worse than surrender would.

Nor has the fact that the United Kingdom did have a credible nuclear programme of its own (unlike the Third Reich, whose nuclear programme was a bad joke) which, even if the National Socialists defeat the Soviet Union, would have meant that the National Socialists were doomed to lose the war anyway; in fact they were doomed to lose the war from the moment they started it, because of this.

Nor has the fact that the United Kingdom has no reason to make peace with the Third Reich because the British government has no reason to trust the National Socialists to keep their word in such an agreement, so such an agreement is unworkable.

Nor has the fact that even a Germany which had eliminated the Soviet Union (in an exceptionally brutal and murderous manner—the term 'eliminated' is more literal than usual) would be unable to eliminate the United Kingdom and was vastly industrially outmatched by the United States, which would undoubtedly have led to its defeat.

The fact that the National Socialists had some examples of successful engineering does not translate to great advancements in new realms of physics. Even their engineering was suspect and often prone to over-engineering, unreliability and taking far too many different parts.
 
I think the statement that "the issue was never in doubt" is by no means realistic. On the contrary, the issue was in doubt even as it was! Without any of the 3 big powers, it is exponentially more difficult for the germans to be defeated.

It is linearly more difficult, not exponentially. It would take longer, but it would have happened, nonetheless. The Nazi Reich was insane, irrational and incapable of winning the sort of global war of attrition it cornered itself into.

How will a Normandy landing be going with the germans having at least TWICE or more troops and weapons opposing them (if the USSR is out)? Would they even manage to obtain air superiority over France (let alone Germany) with thousands more Luftwaffe aircraft in the fray?

Again, IF they defeat the USSR to such an extent that they are able to transfer most forces to the West... Which is vanishingly unlikely prospect. Even then, USA and UK can place more men, aircraft and weapons at the beaches than the Germans could ever have. USA managed to produce more aircraft in a single year than the Germans and the Japanese did during the ENTIRE war. They produced more ships than the entire world combined. The Soviet Union, by themselves produced more artillery and tanks than Germany did with all of Europe under her control...

How would the USSR be holding the germans back, without the UK (and later US) forcing them to divert ever more troops and resources in the West and Africa?

As in OTL? Over 80% of the German warmaking capacity were tied directly or indirectly to the Eastern Front. The rest was garrisoning occupied territories and a few divisions in North Africa. Only in 1943 did the West drew more attention. Still, 2/3 of forces were in the East. And by 1943, the German defeat in the East was happening.

How will the US even get involved in Europe, if UK is out?

How would the UK be out? If by cease fire - how does that happen, unless the Germans agree to certain terms, and even then it would be invalidated the moment the US enters the war. UK will not be defeated and occupied by the Germans.

US could also intervene indirectly by supplying the Soviets even more. And if worse comes to worse, by direct landing first in Africa, then in UK.
 
In addition to Shaby's excellent points I would add that, in spite of the oft-used PoD requiring no support from the USA to the USSR, the USSR was already turning the tide and pushing back Germany before Lend-Lease materials started to arrive in great quantity.

It is popular in the West, for obvious reasons, to exaggerate the role the West played in the defeat of the National Socialists and underestimate the role of the Soviet Union—but let us be engaged in history, not nationalist chest-thumping.
 
How much better would things have gone if Italy had an army that was actually fairly competent rather than the OTL shitshow? Italy doing better in North Africa (although RN superiority will always make supply a huge issue) and against Greece could reduce the need for German troops in these theatres, and in the case of Greece allows for an earlier Barbarossa. It could also help to have more, well-trained and equipped axis forces on the eastern front.

Just wondering cos this was gonna be one of the main POD's for a TL I was planning with an Axis victory in Europe.
 
How much better would things have gone if Italy had an army that was actually fairly competent rather than the OTL shitshow?

Would require a fairly early PoD because Italy was a poor and industrially undeveloped country. To change this introduces a flock of butterflies whose effects cannot easily be predicted.
 
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