WI: Nazi Attack on the United States Instead?

A Nazi attack would almost certainly produce a "rally round the flag" effect and lead to an even larger FDR victory than IOTL.
 

amphibulous

Banned
The reason for the attack is simple, and really the same one as OTL. The USA was giving Britain massive amounts of aid virtually for free; Destroyers for Bases, Lend-Lease, escorting convoys half-way, etc.

The for-free part is completely untrue: the USN agreed that the value of the bases was far higher than that of the destroyers, enormous British assets got cashed in the US at bargain rates, and the US got radar and jet technology, access to better code breaking and intelligence, etc.
 
The only thing I can think of is a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare off the East Coast after the Navy started escorting convoys halfway across the Atlantic.
 
If you want Pearl Harbor replicated, have the Nazis capture the Bearn, complete the Graf Zeppelin and Peter Strasser, and capture AND complete the Joffre. Maybe bring along Italian frogmen. 4 decks should be enough for a sizable air raid, IF they make it across the ocean without being wiped out by superior British and American task forces.

Condor airliners flew Berlin to New York nonstop prewar. If suicide missions are acceptable, they could try a 9/11 style attack. Though technologically feasible, there's no conceivable point to it.




[Insert usual disclaimers about ultimate defeat of Nazis, money better spent on panzer divisions, etc]
 
The reason for the attack is simple, and really the same one as OTL. The USA was giving Britain massive amounts of aid virtually for free; Destroyers for Bases, Lend-Lease, escorting convoys half-way, etc. America was taking militant actions against Germany, and it was only logical the Germans respond in some way.

Arguablly it was very close to this. The US and Germany were waging a undeclared naval war in the Atlantic. I cant remember if any submarines were sunk, but US warships were attacked & hit. The US destroyer Rueben James was sunk.


... The US might even decide that the game is not worth the candle and pull back & leave Britain to fend for itself.

That would be the motivation. My guess is discovery of the planned US occupation of Iceland would be a good target. Sink their little fleet & they will run away in tears. Right?
 
A Nazi attack would almost certainly produce a "rally round the flag" effect and lead to an even larger FDR victory than IOTL.

This.

Of Dewey's 99 EV in 1944, the only states he won by more than 6% were Colorado (+6, 6 EV), North Dakota (+8, 4 EV), Vermont (+14, 3 EV), South Dakota (+16, 4 EV), Nebraska (+17, 6 EV), Kansas (+21, 8 EV).

So you could easily see Dewey winning six states and 31 EV; whether this would render him an unviable candidate in 1948 I leave to you.
 
Just the supply of war materials to the Allies alone is not a big enough reason to cause Germany to pre-emptively attack the US-even Hitler knew that the US would be doing so should Britain and France enter the war as he saw them as 'hesitantly' Allied.

In order for such an attack to be as non-ASB as possible, you need the pre-US entry Atlantic shooting war in 1941 between the Kriegsmarine and USN to occur in 1939-1940. American entry has to also be seen as a significant detriment to Germany such that they are willing to try anything to keep it out of the war (World War I anyone?). Therefore Germany hopes that it can cripple or damage the USN enough to discourage the US from trying to enter the war. Whether the attack works or not does not matter, the US will be at war the day after.

A paranoid Nazi leadership is easy to get as it already is. A more internationalist US before 1940? That is the challenge.
 
Maybe something like Nazis attacking a submarine base on the East Coast, to slow down the supplies heading to the Allies? I mean, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both completely unexpected, and had little to no actual reasoning behind it. Seems to me like this would be right up the Nazi's alley.
 
Maybe something like Nazis attacking a submarine base on the East Coast, to slow down the supplies heading to the Allies? I mean, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were both completely unexpected, and had little to no actual reasoning behind it. Seems to me like this would be right up the Nazi's alley.

Pearl harbour had a lot of reasoning behind it. 9/11 too, but that is not a discussion for this thread.

How would attack a submarine base slow down the convoys to UK?
 
Pearl harbour had a lot of reasoning behind it. 9/11 too, but that is not a discussion for this thread.

How would attack a submarine base slow down the convoys to UK?

What I found out about Pearl Harbor was that the Japanese were preparing for war with the US because of the Philippines and US aid to China and wanted to cripple the Americans as much as they could. And maybe not submarines, but the Nazis would have liked to stop supplies from getting to the UK, right?
 
What could have caused 9/11 or Pearl Harbor-type attack on a major area in the United States by Nazi Germany, before or instead of Pearl Harbor? How would this affect American intervention in World War II? Would the Japanese still attack, or would the Pacific and European wars stay separate?

Animal House would be different.
 
What could have caused 9/11 or Pearl Harbor-type attack on a major area in the United States by Nazi Germany, before or instead of Pearl Harbor? How would this affect American intervention in World War II? Would the Japanese still attack, or would the Pacific and European wars stay separate?

...with what? :confused:

The only thing I could possibly see is submarines... Maybe? Commandos perhaps? I don't think they had the capacity to pull anything near the levels of Pearl Harbour. Not with the Royal Navy sniffing around at the same time.

The US might even decide that the game is not worth the candle and pull back & leave Britain to fend for itself.

I seriously doubt that. Pearl Harbour showed how pissed off the USA got when it was attacked on home soil, I don't see the US reacting any differently to Nazi Germany.

Germany either World War lacked the surface navy and ships, especially troop ships, to invade England although they did manage Norway and Finland. If they had built a sizable surface Navy in the 1930's, they wouldn't have had the steel to build an army sufficient for it's far more important European campaigns so Austria and the Sudatenland yes, Poland probably not and France certainly not for invasion.

Sending troops in a passenger liner for a nucleus would be feasible, like the attack in Danzig and in Norway but only once and at the very start of hostilities, at best a few thousand infantry with perhaps artillery, tanks, and trucks arriving on coordinated freighters. Seizing the Panama Canal would be the most possible for such a stroke, sized force, and ability to get shipping there. The U.S. had a sizable surface navy and far more commercial and passenger shipping to utilize in response although it would have taken months to even get Marines down there in response during which time the Canal's equipment could have been thoroughly wrecked (as a suicide mission and one that would only help the Japanese Navy by slowing U.S. naval reinforcement of the Pacific fleet-big deal in 1942 though.)

There was an alt history novel with a German Panzer expeditionary force sent by cargo ships into Northern Mexico and then striking across the border presumably to disrupt the oil fields in West Texas or copper mines in Arizona (low yield for throwing away precious tanks and tank crews, they were always critically short of these.) The novel had Apaches, Hopi, local ranchers etc. responding in a replay of cavalry vs. Apaches that was an entertaining novel.

The most likely way to beat the logistics and sea lift requirements would be taking the German American Bund movement to actively organizing guerrillas and full military units to seize or disrupt key areas like Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnatti, Texas, etc. with quite large German-American populations (there's actually more Americans of German descent than British Isles, around 28 million currently, and in the 1930's many were only a generation or two emigrated.) So putting together a German-American "army" the size of the regular Army of 300,000 or so men scattered at small posts in the U.S., Pacific, etc. and armed primarily with bolt-action Springfield or Enfield rifles, WWI machine guns, a few hundred trucks and tanks, fewer still modern artillery pieces, and few aircraft would be more "doable" than it initially sounds. A few cargo ships with light and heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft 88's, some half-tracks and light tanks to obsolete for France, lots of grenades and mortars, and they'd have a competitive force for the 1930's-1940 Army. Fighting many small battles across the Midwest would certainly disrupt America's ability and interest in supplying the British, Russians, and Chinese forces but that'd take a lot of foresight to realize how crippled Stalin would be without U.S. massive aid or that the U.S. would and could build enough cargo ships quickly enough to outpace U-Boat sinkings and sustain the British Isles. Assuming, somehow, the fighting went on from 1940-1943 in the U.S. that might tip the balance for Russia being forced to the peace table with Germany and perhaps Britain starved into submission or losing Egypt and the Suez Canal without U.S. armor and artillery supplementing the British forces in Egypt. It'd also give probably a 1-2 year breathing space for Japan to repair and utilize the Dutch East Indies' oilfields, Malaya's rubber, and Indochina's mines into their supply chains while not attacking Pearl Harbor or the Phillipines and leaving the U.S. out of it in the Pacific. Generally that kind of long term warfare in the U.S. would require a supplying government providing arms, funds, training, intelligence, etc. and it's a long ways from Germany or Argentina for that matter and that'd take significant changes in Mexico in the late 1930's-40's to be supportive.

There are many flaws in this scenario. First off, how do you get passenger ships past the Royal Navy that was sinking basically everything coming into the North Sea, passenger ships included? Or are they opening the war against the West by starting with the USA? Because the entire Heer would need to have their brains removed to even dream of this idea. All you are going to do is have the USA/France/Britain all on you at the same time. Also you seem to want to attack the USSR who is also going to be getting USA aid right off the cuff, so that idea fails. Secondly if they somehow did get the men and materials through to the US and attack Panama as you have proposed, why would it take months to get marines to the already heavily defended Panama Canal, you know that thing that is the blood line for US shipping? Also It's hundreds of kilometres across, how do you capture the entire length of that? Surprise will only get you so far and at best the Germans would maybe capture a small section of it, before they are wiped out once the Americans figure out what is going on (which will take hours not weeks). Finally, how on earth do you supply an ongoing guerilla movement which is logistically beyond your reach thanks to thousands of kilometres of water. Why are all the German Americans rallying around this Nazi idiot brigade who has volunteered to lead this doomed sally? How do they plan on supplying such a force across thousands of kilometres of hostile water? I'm sorry, the Nazi's weren't the brightest, but they didn't conquer Europe by doing silly things like this.
 
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What I found out about Pearl Harbor was that the Japanese were preparing for war with the US because of the Philippines and US aid to China and wanted to cripple the Americans as much as they could. And maybe not submarines, but the Nazis would have liked to stop supplies from getting to the UK, right?



Stopping supplies form the USA would not be obtained by attacking the USA in the first place. Better make a deal US style, as the USA were not al all happy to join the war in the first place. Such an offer would likely have been made without FDR, as he was the driving force for the Lend Lease and other support to the British in WW2, before the USA entered the war themselves.
 
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