WW2 slugfest: America vs germany

In june of 1944, the allys land in france and draw the german armys into a slow battle of attrition. Even with the help of the deadliest tactical air force in history, it takes 8 weeks before the allys are able to break out of normandy. By that point, they had attained a crushing numerical superiority and were able to chase the germans out of the country in another 8 weeks. By late september of 1944, the pursuit operation had ground to a halt due to overstreched supply lines, and the germans took the opportunity to reorganise their scattered forces. As bad as things had gone on the western front, the situation was even worse on the eastern front. They had lost a tremendous amount of territory to the russians in an offensive so large that entire corps were swallowed up. At this point, however, the situation gets downright strange...

An ROB decides to intervene and make some drastic changes to the course of the war. It uses supernatural levels of influence at all levels to convince every single belligerent participating in WW2 to drop out of the conflict and declare their neutrality. All countrys, that is, except for america and germany, who will be forced to continue the war without the direct military assistance of their allys. They can still utilize whatever base and supplys they were using before, but they will not have foreign armys, navys, or air forces to aid them. This development fills both sides with an equal mixture of elation and panic: Germany will no longer have to worry about the menace of russia, and america will no longer have to concern themselves with japan. Instead, their futures rest on the battlefields of western europe, where they desperately pour millions of additional soldiers into.

By this point in the war, the germans have been battered by operation overlord and dragoon, and battered by operation bagration, but they aren't done fighting. The bizarre situation which caused every other nation to withdraw from the conflict has reinvigorated their faltering war effort. It is late in september when the U.S. scrambles to get its spare forces out of the pacific, and germany rushes to get its troops out of eastern europe. The most obvious and immediate effect of the ROB intervention is to relieve alot of pressure from the germans while simultaneously making the americans job much harder. Without the help of the anglo-canadians, and also from the polish and french, they are now outnumbered by the germans, making an offensive difficult to continue. The americans have 37 divisions to oppose 89 german divisions. * How does the war unfold from this point?


*Before anyone complains how unfair that seems to be, remember that not only did the americans have more men allocated outside of divisional structures, but the divisions themselves were larger than their german equivalents.

Relevant figures
-By september 1944, the germans have 147 divisions in eastern europe, 89 divisions in western europe, and 21 divisions in other theaters. Transferring all these divisions to the western front would allow them to increase their strength by 188 percent.
-By september 1944, the americans have 37 divisions in western europe, 27 divisions in south-east asia, and 33 divisions in other theaters. Transferring all these divisions to the western front would allow them to increase their strength by 162 percent.

 

By late 1944 the German military and nation is so maimed that they would just still lose to the US as strategic bombing would wreck German abilities transfer forces from other fronts.

 

*Allies *Armies

Also, the WW2 tactical air forces didn't hold a candle to even someone like the Modern Russian tactical air support, let alone the PGM heavy ISAF CAS or the ongoing Iraq/Syria operations which use millions of dollars of cruise missiles and PGMs a week. In Afghanistan, you could have manned ISTAR aircraft over the combat AO 5-10 minutes after a contact started, and almost 24/7 drone coverage. You could literally hit a single man with an MG with a missile without ever talking to the guys he's shooting at. On the flip side, in Normandy, the claimed to actual kill rate on tanks was somewhere in the region of single digit percentages.

 

While this is all true, I think he's talking about WW2 America vs WW2 Germany this time.

 

And the USAAF strategic air component:
United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Summary Report (European War)
By early 1945 the USAAF bombing had pretty much collapsed the German railway system, while in the Battle of the Bulge after the weather cleared the German ground forces were smashed.

 

Yeah, I'm well aware, I'm just responding to the "Even with the help of the deadliest tactical air force in history" comment on the first line of the OP.

 

When it comes to the strategic bombing of germany, just how big of a contributor was the royal air force? Having them take the night shift while the americans took the day shift was a big part of its eventual success (which is still the subject of some controversy, BTW). The brits contributed alot of planes to tactical air missions too, so not having them in the fight is going to have a noticeable effect on things.

 

Well, since the Russians and such cannot make war on Germany, the Germans cut through the Russians and steal their equipment to ship West.

I still give it to us Yanks. Go on defensive, until reinforced then launch a full American counterattack. Let alone many German divisions were suffering from poorer replacement quality as I recall let alone equipment.

 

Let me put it this way.

Wartime GDP of the Great Powers
1938 to 1945 in International Dollars and 1990 Prices (billions)*
​

*Based on Table 1 found in Mark Harrison, The USSR and Total War: Why Didn't the Soviet Economy Collapse in 1942? from Mark Harrison, "The Economics of World War II: an Overview," in Mark Harrison, ed., The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison, Cambridge University Press (1998), 10.

In 1944 America has a GDP literally three times greater than that of Germany. You cannot defeat that economic reality without a massive advantage in the modernization of your factories and industrial capacity, but during World War 2 America had the greatest industrial capacity in the world.

It has such a large industrial capacity that it made more destroyers in 1944 than Japan did in the course of the war in the Pacific. It made more carriers and escort carriers in 1944 than Japan made warships in total in 1944. It made more destroyer escorts in 1944 than Japan made warships of any type in the entire period between 1941 and 1945 -and 1944 wasn't even America's biggest year for ship production.



This is a curbstomp thread.

 

I already knew that america had a larger and more diverse economy than the germans. However, there is a difference between 'they can outproduce the germans' and 'they will defeat the germans militarily.' These claims are not the same.

I appreciate your attention to the economic angle, but its too deterministic for my taste. You haven't addressed the situation on the ground, and just how much it favors the germans. They were being crushed by three huge empires (america, britain, russia) and their allys, but now they only have to fight against one huge empire by itself. The americans need to ship their troops and supplys over a larger distance than the germans, who still outnumber the americans in western europe. Their troops in eastern europe can be brought into the theater faster than the americans can bring back their troops in south-east asia. Though as wiking85 said, strategic bombing could complicate the transfer of soldiers.

And not to toot my own horn or anything, but the german army also posses' higher fighting power than the americans. So the situation isn't as cut and dry as you make it seem. This is mainly going to be a land conflict, since germany is quite weak in naval power projection.

 

With the war in the east over the US will be facing thousands of extra tanks and tank destroyers as well as an extra 2 million troops. The germans likely keep superiority in numbers for most of the war in Europe even if they can't repulse the d-day landings

 

Since the RAF was mostly interested in making rubble bounce and killing civvies, plus their role in the oil campaign was pretty much over, their major contributions were mostly done in terms of transport bombing.

In January 1944 I'd be willing to say you've got a point, but by late Autumn 1944 the Germans are in a state of collapse, having suffered horrible, enormous losses of their best men. By September the war is basically on Germany's border.

 

Too deterministic huh?

How about this. If, and a big if, Germany "holds the line", German population centers gets nuke in 1945.

 

Number of divisions won't tell us anything.

• Except for a few paratroop units, West Allied divisions were completely mechanized with organic tank and tank destroyer battalions.
• Overwhelming air superiority
• Overwhelming artillery support with proximity shells
• Overwhelming material superiority from bullets to beans

The Germany military's preoccupation of "Elite" units like the SS and Panzer Lehr means that to create these units, the rest of the frontline units were weakened. So you basically end up with a hollow army that is dependent on the elite units. So instead of having theses elite units enhance the combat power of the army as a whole, it becomes dependent on it to achieve anything.

 

People are stressing on economics/industry is because it was (and possibly is) just that important. It doesn't matter how brilliant your generals are or how great the individual soldiers are. They can defeat every army they come in contact with but as long as they can't stop the other armies... then they lose anyways. This is relevant as the greater American population (not just in absolute numbers, but also in the greater utilization of said population) means that the USA will end up with more armies than Germany (even accounting for distance). The sheer difference in industrial capacity cannot be stressed enough. Foe example, the ships built by Bethlehem Steel alone can take out the entire German surface navy (and probably a good chunk of the u-boats too), and as for GM & Ford:

And before you bitch about shipping all those things over to Europe, there's always thousands of liberty ships... not to mention hundreds of destroyer escorts (not to mention air patrol, etc.), u-boats are gonna get slaughtered.

 

At this point in time, the Americans have finished up the Marianas campaign, and are a month away from landing at Leyte. At this point, the US can afford to put further ground offensive operations against Japan on hold, and while the invasion of the Philippines still has a good shot at going ahead due to the same political considerations that allowed the invasions in the first place, this still frees up quite a few divisions.

Longer-term, though, the US needs to raise more divisions to defeat Germany on their own, and this is a problem. The US had enormous competing demands for manpower from its other branches and from industry, and cannot risk raising much more manpower without causing economic dislocations.

Of course, that's if they do it via ground offensive. The US knows their manpower shortages, know the Germans will transfer vast number s of troops from the East. Their best bet is to transfer as much strength to France, go on the defensive, and wait for an opportunity, either to counterattack or to get nukes. Helping that is the fact that French neutrality is going to be in name only. They're still being invaded and occupied by the Germans, after all. That means supplies, transportation, and probably a lot of Frenchmen in rear-echelon duties.

This is winnable by the US. I just don't think it's via a grand march of Shermans to Berlin.

 

How many of the German "divisions" were the size of a regiment at best? How many lacked any ability whatsoever to operate outside their staging areas? And yes the overwhelming American advantage in air power would make any German attempt to attack a bloodbath, weather willing.

 

Is this picture from US nuclear testing?

 

To get German divisions up to full strength by October 1944 with reasonable quality manpower probably 60% of the German army would have to be disbanded so as to consolidate equipment, quality manpower, and transport/supplies into US style divisions to have any shot of competing. Even then the US would simply have for more replacement manpower and ability to absorb losses and keep going thanks to their firepower advantage and air superiority.

 

oh god. not this wehraboo shit again.

 

If Japan becomes neutral the US can shift all the Marines and soldiers out of the Pacific.

 

Most likely. As the table of figures showed, even if both the americans and germans were able to magically transport all their troops to western europe, the germans would not lose their superiority in numbers. In fact, they could actually make a slight gain (188% compared to 162%).

Yes, it is. War is not deterministic, nor is it useful to consider it so. Military theorys that rely on deterministic approaches are not only useless, but actively harmful to their users.

FYI, this scenario is set late in september of 1944. The little boy and fat man bombs weren't ready until july of 1945. Thats almost 10 months away.

The number of divisions (and the force ratios in general) is an important aspect that you ignore at your own risk.

Your analysis is accurate but incomplete (it should have mentioned ULTRA, BTW), since it misses out on the factors working in germanys favor.

-The germans have better anti-tank weapons, particularly with regards to the handheld panzerfaust. Even though they have a shortage of tanks and anti-tank guns, the germans are still very competent at using the two together as a sword and shield to defeat armored thrusts.
-The germans have increasing numbers of tanks like the panther, tiger I, and tiger II becoming available. Despite problems with reliability, these are excellent tanks which are superior to the sherman in a tank fuel. This also holds true for the tank destroyers that are still being churned out of factorys.
-Even at this stage in the war when personnel policys had been turned upside down, the germans still have greater fighting power than the americans. They have better trained soldiers and officers *, with better command staffs, more initiative, and more cohesion. This gives them an advantage in many dimensions.
-The germans have jet aircraft like the Me 262 and Ar 234. Their interceptors will soon get shipments of R4M rockets, which can take down a B-17 with one or two hits from beyond the range of their defensive guns.
-Their arsenal of flak guns will soon adopt the doppelzunder fuse, which increases their lethality against bomber formations by a factor of two to five (depending on the caliber of the flak gun). This will make daylight bombing raids alot more dangerous.

*This is also true of senior officers, including those who led regiments and divisions. The 90th infantry division which got bloodied in normandy is perhaps the best example of this.

Thats just an opinion, and its probably a wrong one, too. There is no inherent reason for an army to be filled with divisions of equal quality, particularly that isn't the best way to employ your manpower. Some of them are going to be tasked with low risk, simple missions which don't even merit the attention of an bog standard division: Thats why the germans could get away with using static divisions composed of ethnic germans (or even minoritys). They didn't need APCs, tanks, and SP guns to guard the atlantic wall, or to deal with partisans and worker uprisings.

The problem is that increasing the size of the army isn't something you can do overnight, or without consequences (as CV12Hornet pointed out). Many of the american divisions that got sent into france had trained for a solid year, and still came up short against the germans they fought against. As one commentor summarised: ''The average American infantry division were probably never as good at pure infantry tactics as a good German division. But the Americans almost always had more armor, more artillery, and more airpower than their opponents so it is understandable if they substituted firepower for blood.'' So you are probably going to need an entire year before new divisions can be raised, trained, and actually sent into battle with reasonable odds of success.

You are right on the money with this analysis, though the conclusion of the war is yet to be determined.

The naval implications in this scenario are pretty mixed. Not having the royal navy around is going to make things a real pain in the ass, and this holds true for the canadian navy as well. Green water operations around europe are going to be hampered, and transatlantic convoys will be heavily exposed. Fortunately, the americans will be able to transfer all their carrier strike groups into theater within a matter of weeks. That will give them options they didn't originally have, including offensives against norway, denmark etc. The surface portion of the kriegsmarine will be in grave danger.

 

Eh, I'm not so sure that the transatlantic convoys are going to be exposed. The Atlantic Fleet isn't exactly lacking in ASW escorts, and they already made it a habit of arguably over-escorting their major convoys. I don't foresee any serious hiccups in supply or reinforcement, especially since British shipping is now being left alone, and simply buying supplies from the British is still an option.

As for the German surface fleet, Tirpitz is basically all the Americans have to worry about, and Missouri and Wisconsin are still on the East Coast. With the Pacific War on hold, the Americans can keep them in the Atlantic, which is more than enough to tackle Tirpitz should she try to break out. Brown-water forces are an issue, but liberating France should have taken care of the worst of it (oh, and the loss of the French submarine bases is a major blow to the U-boat arm, further aiding American convoy movement). Of the remaining major surface combatants, Scheer is a training ship, Hipper is partially decomissioned, Gneisenau is disarmed, and only Prinz Eugen and Admiral Lutzow are still active. Hardly much of a threat to the Atlantic Fleet, which still counts five modern cruisers, not counting whatever Clevelands and Baltimores have been recently commissioned but not yet transferred to the Pacific.

I honestly don't see the Americans moving against Norway or Denmark. Too much risk for minimal reward, especially with the ongoing manpower shortage.

 

Can we get clarification on German possessions? Like do they still have Czechoslovakia and Poland? Or were those abandoned due to the needs for the neutrality peace deals? I remember Churchill wanted to fight he Russian over Poland he felt so strongly about it.

Also I remember that the US could have sent more soldiers to the European theater, but chose not to for supply reasons, since they couldn't ever hope to move that many soldiers and still supply them. Would that also be true for the Germans who now have a massive influx of soldiers to send?

Also about those SS units some people have mentioned, many SS units were made up of foreign fighters, if the Germans get to keep them, can the US enlist Foreign Legions as well?