Germany could easily have won the Battle of Britain and therefore most likely the entire war

I read The First and the Last by Adolph Galland 20 years ago or so, and remembered it as a riveting read that exposed an amazing number of mistakes. I reread it recently with an eye to whether Germany could have won or not, one of the oldest saws in alternate history which probably everyone has thought of at some point in time. How close did we come to a completely alien world to the one we know today? Would would really have happened? Of course even a minor change that far back could make the world unrecognizable so I doubt there is much value to speculate too much about how the world would look, but if you have an interest in warfare in general then it's a pretty interesting exercise to speculate on alternate courses of the war - and more or less what strategy games like Hearts of Iron are all about.

Most people concentrate on vastly different strategies as ways that Germany could win. It could perhaps go through Spain and take Gibraltar, then the lightly guarded North Africa and Suez canal. From there Malta and Crete would be useless because they could not be resupplied. Then Germany could seize oil fields all over the region and thus eliminate its great Achilles heel. The problem here is that they would have a completely insecure rear exposed to the Soviets. According to Galland the Soviets were demanding all of Bulgaria and access to Mediterranean ports and this was what ultimately, abruptly, ceased the Battle of Britain.

Soviets were not good neighbors, and while we can't really know what would happen, the idea of Germany getting at unlimited oil supplies should be enough to panic anyone sane since Germany was not exactly a pleasant neighbor to have around as it was. So maybe the Mediterranean plan would work but it depends on the political situation more than anything else, and most of the world leaders hated Hitler with a passion. Stalin his supposed ally made constant demands and invasions of his neighbors since the day he came to power, and could hardly be depended on to remain peaceful for long.

Of course Germany could also prepare more. Go slower with retaking Sudetenland and East Prussia for example. However even before the war, while still ostensibly German citizens, physicists like Meitman and her nephew Frisch were already working with foreign groups with fission research that would probably have put a very firm timer on Germany's continued existence. But then of course perhaps they could have simply done nothing at all after Czechoslavakia and only fought a defensive war with the Soviets if forced to it.

Regardless there are many obvious things that could have been done beforehand, such as making more synthetic fuel factories from the start. This would require more steel but there are many areas Germany was a bit wasteful with steel such as laying down a few pocket battleships as well as a pair of truly gigantic ones. They would also have benefited from more submarines of a more sophisticated type. If they had started with boats more similar to the type XXI from the beginning and had a decent number of them, that alone would probably have been enough to starve out England.

Yet again, nothing they might have done would exist in a vacuum. If Germany started laying down hundreds of large submarine hulls before the war, that might have provoked a bigger response from England than even moving in on Czechoslovakia did. Certainly though they could have done much more to gear up for mass production of planes and subs and especially tanks which were produced pitifully slowly; the number of planes made in 1939 for example is just tiny, and at that time the tank factories were rolling out a mere 35 tanks per month. To have any meaning though I feel we need to set an exact date where the battle is already ensured to take place and make changes only from there - otherwise you could wildly speculate that Poland could win against Germany given enough time to prepare and doing everything just so for the last few centuries!

I think Jan 1, 1940 is the easiest starting point. Many mistakes go back to the beginning of the Luftwaffe but at this point it was not too late to fix them yet, and 1940 also saw several crucial mistakes that affected the whole course of the war. Blunders that no one should have considered in the first place.

The chief mistake of the Luftwaffe that haunted it throughout its existence was one that plagued all the other air forces of the time as well; the leadership became almost absolutely dominated by bomber captains. Being a fighter pilot is a young man's game so this should not be so surprising, but in the Luftwaffe this led to serious problems for the fighter wings at every turn, and they needed fighters much more than their opponents since they were numerically inferior and had all their industry in easily reachable areas.

It also was believed at the time that you could simply bomb entire nations to their knees using bombers as a terror weapon. The infamous "Bomber" Harrison exemplified this more than anyone else, certain that killing off as much of the population possible was the only way to truly win a war. However this did not work at all for the Germans and shockingly, even the horrific bombing of Germany by millions of tons of explosives that wiped out virtually every decent sized town and killed endless civilians did basically nothing at all to really impede the war effort. Quite the contrary, production went up in all areas right up to the very end. So many of the presumptions that led to the outcome of the BoB were heavily ingrained to the thinking of the day and that was a large contribution to its failure for the Germans.

There were also issues unique to the Luftwaffe. The idea of a schnellbomber which was so fast it could make it to the target, drop its bombs, and escape before interception was an idea that became fixated in the Luftwaffe and in Hitler himself which was simply not a feasible way of operation and cost them a great deal of wasted resources on what amounted to suicide bombing. Divebombing was an obsession for Ernst Udet, and one which ultimately crippled the entire long range bomber production program for Germany in World War II.

Dive bombing puts a huge strain on an airframe, and it is much more difficult for a larger craft to deal with this kind of stress. So for example the Ju88 "wonder bomber", while it was quite versatile, was simply a giant waste of resources for the amount of bombs it could drop. It was also awkward to fly, a crash prone albatross that should have never been made. Yet amazing numbers of these largely ineffective bombers were built, which could instead have gone to fighter production or more efficient bombers like the Do 217 "flying pencil" which could drop three times the bomb load, had a longer range, and cost virtually exactly the same as far as resources go. The flying pencil was available early and was a very good medium range heavy bomber but it simply never got built in sufficient quantities to matter, while instead endless resources went into useless and outdated designs instead.

Dive bombing requirements are also the root cause of the crippling of the me210, one of the biggest failures of the Luftwaffe; and to some extent the only true long range heavy bomber Germany managed to produce in numbers, the He 177. This was a plane which would have been highly useful in the Battle of Britain but never showed up because of absurd design decisions and requirements much steeper than any other similar bomber. The finished result was ultimately a bomber that was much faster than a B17 Flying Fortress yet had a similar bomb load and range, but by the time it arrived on the scene Germany was already under heavy air attack and even when it did arrive, the high command continually demanded more building of the ju88 tactical bomber instead of a more serious strategic bomber like the He 177 or even the medium-ranged but very heavy hitting (and cheap) Do 217. When they were actually used these bombers were very successful.

Not to mention of course at this point the smartest idea would have been to heavily reinforce the fighter wings with new production. This never happened until 1945 when it was far too late, and even then they squandered these fighters by using them merely as an extension of the Army much like the Russians did with their own force, throwing them away trying to strafe the oncoming armies and thereby letting them get cut down by enemy fighters without doing any good for the German defense.

All of these things were not set in stone, though. The lessons had already been learned, but somehow the failures simply never got corrected even though many like Galland constantly railed against the high command and even Hitler himself. It was clear from Spain that the schnellbomber concept was flawed, but things carried on much the same nevertheless.

Likewise Udet was eventually hounded into suicide due to lack of quick production and slowness of the prototype phase, but through inertia programs like the Ju88 went on through the whole war and were produced in staggering amounts even long after much better bombers were available like the Do 217 and the He 177. This program should have been canceled immediately once Udet was gone, or even in the prototype phase - another medium bomber was not even needed at this point anyway.

There was also a huge amount of resources and money spent on the anti-aircraft gun. For the resources used to make a single 88 mm AA gun, you could make approximately 3.5 Bf 190s! Yet endless thousands of these relative ineffectual AA guns were made when an air force with enough fighters to maintain total air superiority could instead have been made instead and turned the tide of the air battle perhaps even in 1944.

At the battle's start Germany had the best of almost everything and the absolutely most experienced and disciplined air force in the world. The Bf 109 was not only perhaps the best single engine fighter but also smaller and cheaper than any comparable fighters, not to mention more heavily armed. The .30 caliber machine guns used by the RAF could take hundreds of hits to take down a plane at times, and were not that accurate due to being wing mounted. Fire at the wrong range and the bullets could completely miss even if your volley is aimed perfectly! A single 20 mm shell was often enough to take down a single fighter, and one burst of a later 30mm cannon was enough to obliterate even the sturdiest bomber.

The Bf 110 was a rugged and powerful yet versatile 2-man fighter with a long range that was faster than even the Bf 109 and early Spitfires. This 'destroyer' was heavily armed enough to take down bombers with ease and yet could be used as a dive bomber or even a torpedo carrier. However, it was already becoming a bit dated by 1940 - it did not turn as well as it could and this would turn out to be a big problem when it came up against the Spitfire.

Even before the battle started though, there had been several critical blunders. Perhaps the worst was the cancellation in 1940 of all research programs that would not yield results within a year. This had enormous long term consequences and it could be argued this was the decisive factor in the loss of the war as a whole. These programs included the German nuclear program, the Fw 190 fighter, the Tiger tank, and perhaps most importantly jet engine research. This set the Me 262 back by about 18-24 months according to The First and The Last.

A much more obvious and easy to correct blunder was the lack of drop tanks for the Bf 109 before the BoB commenced. This blunder alone essentially doomed the entire operation before it began. The only area where the Bf 109 could reach at all was the SE London area, less than 10% of the entire island. The Bf 110 had longer range but very low numbers and that combined with lack of maneuverability doomed it to a short life if it strayed too far inland.

Even so the main issue with the BoB was simply the production priorities. Aside from poor designs like the Ju88 being produced ad nauseum, many obsolete designs like the He 111 were continued in production right until the very end of the war, wasting resources that could have been used elsewhere, especially to develop fighter escorts.

With enough fighters and pilots you have air superiority, and with that England would have been helpless. With full air superiority, the threat of a fleet is meaningless, you can send thousands of bombers and torpedo planes to wipe out any size navy at that point, as was absolutely proven in the Atlantic. And while terror bombing proved to be absolutely useless in the war for both sides, like Germany the English also had a very terrible Achilles heel related to fuel - at Scapa Flow was the largest fuel oil repository in the world. Without it, essentially there is no longer a navy whatsoever. And while today we know there are huge oil reserves there, at the time those were totally unreachable and would have been useless to them for decades.

Dock facilities were a second Achilles heel that was impossible to deal with when heavily defended by fighter cover, but would ultimately be worn down day by day without it - and at that point lend lease and aid from imperial colonies is effectively dead. At that point English would not even be able to feed itself let alone maintain any sort of war machine. These ports had been built up over centuries, and it would simply be impossible to repair them with a hostile air force ruling the skies.

So the objective is clear, air superiority, but can it be done? To my shock, not only would it be possible but in fact rather easy and only due to some really boneheaded mistakes by Goering and Hitler and a host of others did they fail in their task. The key is simply to prioritize the correct industries and to build up a huge air force all through 1940 before starting the Battle of Britain in 1941. It's also possible to attack just as before and win through production, but there is no reason to waste the manpower and resources - once you have air superiority over an island country then any other preparations they have made really make no difference. There is also a not inconsequential chance that waiting a while could lead to a truce or even make the English look like aggressors since you are taking a peaceful stance while they (very ineffectually) attempt to bomb you and accomplish nothing but the killing of a few women, children and elderly.

It may seem like a wild boast to think you can change things so drastically in such a short time, but the truth is that none of the Luftwaffe's planes were truly being mass produced in 1939. They could have chosen much different priorities at that point and the ones they did choose, while not necessarily making BoB impossible, made it many times harder than it needed to be. To illustrate, I broke down the actual production in 1940 into raw numbers and estimates of how much resources it took.

1940 production

b109 1667
resources 1667
me110 1006
resources 2012
ju87 603
resources 856
he111 756
resources 1814
Do 217 20
resources 83
ju88 1816
resources 7336
do17 260
resources 1080
88 flak 1,130
resources 4118

2673 fighters
3,195 bombers (all but 20 outdated or inefficient designs)
1,139 flak guns (limited effectiveness, high expense)

1940 total resources 18157

The flak guns alone used up enough resources and money to build 4000+ fighters, but the true standout is the Ju88. A staggering 7336 Bf 109 fighters could have been built with those same resources. With that kind of air superiority even if the English channeled everything they had into Fighter production it could not remotely rival the Germany production. I came up with an alternate production scheme for 1940 that would have much different priorities.

Alternate 1940 production
Do 217 1000 resources 4160
Bf109 14,000 resources 14,000

Instead of producing redundant and obsolete medium bombers instead the main focus is fighters. Even so, the bombers actually produced would still be more effective than all the second rate bombers that they actually did produce because they carry three times the bomb load and are more heavily defended by gun turrets. At this point the BoB should have been a cakewalk, allowing them to clean up operations by the end of 1941. With over 14000 fighters equipped with drop tanks, there would simply be no way to maintain a strong enough defense to give meaningful opposition to 1000 heavy bombers that the Germans inexplicably completely failed to produce in the real world until the end of 1944.

1941 production

bf109 2764
resources 2764
fw190 228
resources 324
me110 594
resources 1188
me210 92
resources 184
ju87 400
resources 568
he111 756
resources 1814
Do 217 260
resources 600
ju88 2146
resources 8670
88 flak 1,998
resources 6973
10.5 flak 509
resources 2316
total resources 25401

In 1941 we see all the same mistakes being made in the Luftwaffe. In addition this is where the early blunders start to catch up - 1941 is where the Fw 190 would have started mass production (if not earlier) had it not been put on hold. While the Bf 109 once it had drop tanks was arguably better than the early Spitfires, there is no arguing that the Spitfire was in any way a match for the Fw 190. Using a tough and powerful radial engine, this fighter was almost as tough as a Bf 110, but was a better dogfighter than the Bf 109, more heavily armed, similar in cost to a Bf 109, and yet could fulfill the role of ground attack plane as well as the Ju 87! It was most likely the best all around prop plane created in the entire war, yet bafflingly it was not only delayed unnecessarily but also never truly mass produced as it should have been and worse yet was used more often as a ground attack plane than as a fighter.

Bungling in the He 177 program could also easily have been avoided. There was simply no need for bomb diving capabilities, or special power plants that make the bomber go much faster than any similar bomber in the air. it could have been released with weaker engines and still outperformed the B17, and been upgraded later if desired. The schnellbomber concept was obviously faulty since the mid thirties so with better overseers controlling things this would be the year that the He 177 that Hitler so angrily and often demanded would make its debut.

Taking that into account, suddenly the Luftwaffe is startlingly transformed.

alternate 1941 production
88 flak 100 resources 349
10.5 flak 100 resources 455
ju 87 1,000 resources 1,420
do217 500 resources 2,080 (4304)
he177 1,000 resources 7,480
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (18983)
bf109 6,418 resources 6,418 (25401 total)

Suddenly instead of England doing 1000 bomber raids in 1942, it would be Germany doing 2000 bomber raids in 1941 with 10000 or more escort fighters paving their way straight to any target in England.

Certainly Britain would have then made peace...or fallen. Yet as time went by the problems did not become better, but worse. The strategic planning more and more foolhardy and confused. So what of the rest of the war, assuming something like Barbarossa would occur at some point (maybe 1942 instead of 1941, a year with much more favorable weather anyway), or instead perhaps a red attack on Germany?

Actual German production 1942
bf109 2657
resources 2657
fw190 1918
resources 2724 (5381)
me110 501
resources 1002 (6383)
me210 93
resources 186 (6569)
ju87 960
resources 1362 (7931)
he111 1337
resources 3209 (11140)
ju88 2270
resources 9171 (20311)
Do 217 564
resources 2346 (22657)
he177 168
resources 1257 (23914)
88 flak 3,052
resources 10651 (34565)
10.5 flak 701
resources 3190 (37755)
total resources 37755

In 1942 the Germans continued making ever larger numbers of outdated and redundant medium bombers! And continued spending less that 20% of their resources for air arm on fighters, the thing they most vitally needed, especially now ad the Americans started to appear with large numbers of planes.

I would assume that if they followed this plan, the BoB is now over and England is no longer in the war, and America has zero chance to directly fight Germany if they do come into the war at all. But maybe not. Perhaps the English get lucky and hang on and the Americans start to show up in '42.

It's generally assumed that Germany is done once the US arrives in England but D-Day could have been a disaster even having a badly battered Luftwaffe that continued making crazy top level decisions and kept expecting the western defense of a few hundred planes to be able to stop ten times their number on a daily basis.

It might be much different with more fighters in reserve however. They would not need to fly every day so there is no reason to believe fuel would be a big issue. On the contrary, without the ability to bomb synthetic fuel plants Germany can keep its war machine running on synthetics almost indefinitely and would have been able to greatly increase its output in this time instead of constantly losing output to bomber raids.

Perhaps even more of a shock for the Americans in this situation is that without interference from Hitler and the high command, this is also the year that the Me 262 would have gone into mass production. The Ar 234 Blitz Bomber would also go into action, the first schnellbomber that actually lived up to its name.

Alternate 1942 German production
88 flak 500 resources 1745
10.5 flak 250 resources 1137
ju 87 2,000 resources 2480 (5,362)
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4620 (9,982)
he177 1,000 resources 7,480 (17,462)
me262 5,000 resources 7,500 (24,962)
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (32062)
bf109 5,693 resources 5,963

So in this more rational plan, we have not only produced 15,963 fighters, but they are far more advanced. And instead of continuing even now to make terrible medium bombers and ever growing numbers of very expensive but not very effective AA guns that both belong to the 30s. We would also have produced a very able bomber wing to rival that of the Americans and English put together at this date in time.

Moreover, the total number of fighters built is now 15963 in 1942 alone. Historically only 2673 were produced in 1940, 3678 in '41 and 5196 in '42. The historical total is a mere 11547 through the end 1942. By contrast with the adjusted plan the production would be over 37,000 in the same period, and of more advanced models to boot.

The truly stunning thing is that these more capable fighters like the Me 262 also cost less than the old style fighters. Instead of the high octane fuel that takes special factories to produce, mere diesel is acceptable for a jet engine. Even more importantly they are very cheap to produce. No special tools or labor are needed, they are essentially a tube of rolled steel that can be made by just about anyone. The cost was a mere 50-75 reichmarks, while in comparison a single tank's cost was at least 100,000 reichmarks - for the cost of one tank in resources and labor you could make 1,600--2,000 jet engines! The engines did need constant maintenance, but this was very simple - just popping a new engine in which took 20 minutes, and sending the old one off to have its rotors changed out. It was estimated if the war had continued that by mid 1945 Germany would have been able to make over 100,000 jet engines per year.

In addition to all that, the newer planes like the Me 262 and Ho 229 were also much cheaper to make and used much fewer critical war materials. It is amazing to think a largely wooden plane like the Me 262 could out fly anything else in existence at the time, and the Ho 229 was even cheaper to build and fly, and had even better performance and range.

With this kind of Luftwaffe, any landing, or interference of any kind from England or America, would simply be impossible. It could even be largely ignored. Of course you still had to worry about the war in the Soviet Union if that still occurred but with such huge air superiority and with a devastating heavy bomber force it would likely be easy to fight them into a standstill even if all the same disasters like Stalingrad and Kursk still happened. And if the USA never gave lend lease to the Soviets then it would almost be certain they would completely collapse, especially with this much huger bombing and air superiority capacity that could be brought to bear.

If the war continued, the story is the same. Except without the big problems with jet planes engines and long range bombers being delayed things get even scarier.

1943 production

bf109 6013
resources 6013
fw190 3354
resources 4763 (10,776)
me110 641
resources 1282 (12,058)
me210 89
resources 178 (12,236)
me410 271
resources 542 (12,778)
ju87 1672
resources 2374 (15,152)
he111 1405
resources 3372 (18,524)
ju88 2160
resources 8726 (27,250)
Do 217 504
resources 2097 (29,347)
he177 415
resources 3104 (32,451)
88 flak 4,712
resources 16,445 (48,896)
10.5 flak 1,220
resources 5,551 (54,447)
total resources 54,447

alternate 1943 production
88 flak 1,000 resources 3,490
10.5 flak 500 resources 2225
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4620
he177 2,000 resources 14,960 (25295)
me410 1,000
me262 8,000 resources 12,000 (40295)
fw190 10,000 resources 14,200 (54,495)


1944 production

bf109 12807
resources 12807
fw190 11867
resources 16851 (29,658)
me110 128
resources 256 (29,914)
me210 74
resources 148 (30,052)
me410 629
resources 1723 (31,775)
do335 37
resources 122 (31,897)
me262 564
resources 846 (32,743)
ju87 1012
resources 1437 (34,180)
he111 756
resources 1814 (35,994)
ju88 661
resources 2670 (38,666)
he177 464
resources 3474 (42,140)
88 flak 6482
resources 22622 (64,766)
10.5 flak 1331
resources 6056
total resources 70,822

alternate 1944 production
88 flak 1,500 resources 5,325
10.5 flak 750 resources 3,338 (8,663)
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4,620 (13,283)
do335 1,000 resources 3,290 (16,573)
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (23,673)
Amerika 1,000 resources 23,640 (47,313)
ho229 23,509 resources 23509


In this scenario in 1943 the Bf 109 which should have historically long since been replaced by Fw 109 and Me 262, is now officially retired. In 1944 the Ho 229 which is even more able and efficient than the Me 262 also comes onto the scene. Presumably in 1944 the Amerika bomber would also be on the scene. One candidate was completed by the end of the war but it could have been into full production by '44 without the earlier delays.

There are also other scenarios that could have been effected such as the very low resource "People's Fighter" which was faster and heavier armed than any allied fighter and yet barely cost anything to make. If this had been pushed out even in 1943 then it alone may have been a game changer.

Regardless, with the new production plan by 1944 even if Germany were somehow surrounded by the same forces that came to destroy her historically, it is likely that an invasion from the west could be staved off and a peace could be forced in the east. However my guess is that in reality Britain would have toppled quickly in 1941(and added its manpower and materials to Germany) and that the Soviets would have had to face Germany alone and with no lend lease and that would be the end of them. And of communism, 50 years early.

I assume there would be no war with the USA in that case, but of course it is impossible to know for sure how things would play out. It is certain though that the way things did work out was by no means written in stone. Poor planning and bad assumptions and decisions all through the development of the Luftwaffe are what really killed Germany's chance of knocking out England and thereby avoiding a two front war.

The idea that the tank and the air force would make or break the war effort was correct, but the way that they (and many others) believed that the air force should be constructed and used turned out to be very faulty.

 

One problem how was the Third Reich meant to take advantage of any "Win" in the face of the Royal Navy etc. Or i think that operation sea mammal is on the done to death list to be honest.

 

I only skimmed your wall of text but several issues:

1. Fighters don't win wars. Bombers win wars.

2. The Me-262 was a terrible interceptor with horrendous engines.

3. The Ho-229 should be considered a fantasy plane. It only flew once or twice and we have no idea if it was any good or if Germany could build enough

4. The Amerika bomber was an absurd fantasy that could not work in WW2. You could, theoretically, make super-long range bombers. However, navigator isn't really up to the task and a raid on the US requires flying past the south of England (and therefore fighters), Newfoundland (more fighters), Nova Scotia (fighters again), New England (yet more fighters), and finally arriving over New York City 15 hours after takeoff. Then you have to find your target, drop a meaningful payload with enough accuracy to justify the flight, and then fight your way back home.

Newfoundland to NYC is a thousand miles, and you can expect fighters all the way down.

5. Reality is not a RTS game. You can't really shift around resource points to make more of Unit X.

6. Building Ju-87s at all is a mistake past 1940. Go all in on Bf-110, MD-410, and Fw-190 F/G fighter-bombers. So He-123s for light CAS can't hurt.

7. The Do-217 was no better than the Ju-88 defensivly.

8. How do more German fighters allow Unmentionable Sea Mammal?

9. Ar-234 lacks any real bombsight and doesn't have the payload to matter.

10. Ar-234 also suffers from Germany's inability to design a bomber that can carry a meaningful payload internally.

11. You're completly forgetting the 128mm AA gun and erroneously thinking that the 88mm guns contributed anything to strategic air defense.

12. Anything super cheap is also poorly built, shoddily constructed, and is junk.

 

World War II aircraft production - Wikipedia

just one problem UK out produced Germany
had a well thought out radar controlled defence plan and the option of retreating its aircraft out of range of the luftwaffe
the BF110 was dog toffee and germany never sorted out its pilot training programme it produced a few great aces at the expense of not rotating them back to train replacements so you end up producing loads of poorly trained pilots who die

 

And how, in this wonder scenario, would Britain surrender?

I'm not certain on the particulars, but Churchill was willing to gas every German soldier who came within an inch of British soil. This is not conducive to a successful campaign.

Didn't half of all examples crash outside of combat?

 

Repeat after me: Hearts of Iron is not a historical reenactment of possible history. Training of the armed forces tends to matter more in total war scenarios versus wunderweapons; particularly if you have a small population base like Germany which needed to conserve every soldier and multiply their effectiveness versus the equipment spam of the Allies.

 

Besides, if Japan still attacks Pearl Harbour, America certainly wouldn't need or want to surrender.

 

Probably; that was not at all an unusual problem for early jet fighters.

Edit: Anyway, does anyone have a good tl;dr for that OP?

 

Germany doesn't have the airfields, fuel resources or pilot training capacity to run 10k fighters at once.

 

Germany could've destroyed RAF. Then all they had to do was utterly destroy the RN. I'm assuming the Bismarck could do that by himself?

 

No, it couldn't.

/thread.

 

I am just goin to tackle one part of this plan, where is the money going to come form to build all those planes and fund those grand plans that you have for wonder weapons when the German Economy was already on shaky ground.

Between the four year plan, giving power to Göring, spending 10 percent of military and the issuing limited usage bonds to fund German rearmaments was ruining the economy and it would have defaulted on its obligations before the first shoot was fired. Germany needed to either cut military spending, raise taxes, or loot their neighbors to keep going. The first was never going to happen, the second would cut support for the Nazis right before they started the way, and the third required them to move faster then the looming economic disaster.

Those wonder weapons do no good when you can not mine the iron, coal, build the factor, hire the workers or a dozen other things that a poor economy will stop the Nazis from doing.

Pipedreams followed by more pipedreams with a dash of unrealistic hope.

 

Going by some of the Wheraboos I've seen online they might actually believe the Bismarck and Tirpitz could.


EDIT:

I love how you just completely gloss over this.

Did Britian become a nation of literally nothing but Spitfires and Hurricanes in your world? Shoot down enough fighters and Britain just decided to throw in the towel because obviously that's the war settled right there!


10/10 would launch Operation Sealion

 

Sometimes I wish there was a recommended threads list or recommend reads for new war room members that way we would not get these types of threads posted by every new member.
In summary the axis would have never won world war two in our timeline there is nothing they can do to beat the combined industrial might of the USSR, the UK and the freaking US who at the time controlled near half the worlds production capacity.

 

There is a "Done to death Threads" list, actually.

 

I know but I mean a thread list with links to those done to death topics so new members could easily look them up and see that they don't have any ideas that have not been already mentioned and regurgitated many times. New members typically won't be good at using the search function or recognizing which SB members are the most knowledgeable. I guess it would take too much work and the mods are already overworked as it is.

 

Not true at all, this was the erronious thinking of the day. In modern air force how many fighters are there compared to bombers? A whole lot. In germany of the time it was a one to one ratio for much of the war.

The allied bombing of german did nothing at all to affect its production. The only targets that had any effect were synthetic fuel dumps, which could have been protected with more fighters. They were throwing a dozen or hundred fighters against formations of a thousand or more bombers. If they had air superiority ie produced fighters, they would have been strafing the bombers before they can take off in england. That was the whole point of the BoB, air superiority. With it, Germany wins, without it, England is invulnerable. You only get air superiority with fighters and if you have it, you only need a small bomber force because carpet bombing is basically useless, only the most straegic targets like fuel producion, docks, and naval assets actually matter to the war effort and even bombing factories is very difficult to do in an impactful way especially at the time.

That's not true, the engines could be replaced in 20 minutes and have the rotors changed in a few minutes. They were great engines but made with soft steel so they would be easy to reproduce. You can read all about it in the book if you think it's bad. but it's not bad and there is no one who really thinks that who has direct knowledge of it.

It was faster and had better range and handling than the Me 262. Everthing starts as a prototype, and the Germans were ready to mass produce it which means the bugs are worked out. Like the me 262 the main problem was delays back in 1940 of the jet engine program by Hitler.

And not a single one of them had a high enough ceiling to matter if a Ju 390 came in from France.

They are not theoretical, they exist. The US was also working on bombers to bomb Germany from the east coast.

But at this point I am into speculation territory of how the war might go on assuming Germany still is fighting USA and Soviets in 1945 but doing much better.

Of course you can, especially when it is resources that are the issue. Steel used in 88s was one of the most critical war shortage materials for Germany. Every factory, evenery concrete block, requires a lot of steel.

But as I said in my post, in 1939 NOTHING was being mass produced. All the factories and equipment were built or repurposed to what they wanted at that time. At this point they could have chose to cancel Ju88 completely and chosen NOT to make ludicrous numbers of 88s and other AA.

That is arguable. Personally I would push the Fw 190 but historically they did not mass produce it until later, and did not ever make it a priority. I think if they had more air superiority then it would not matter though, that is why the Ju87 did well initially.

In reality I think Ju87 itself was probably a giant mistake. But there are limits to what if scenarios if you want to keep them realistic.

Basically if you go back beyond 1940 then hiring Goering and Udet is a whole mistake, schnellbombers are a big mistake and so on. They would just build a bunch of air superiority fighters and some huge bombers similar to B52s.

What? Oh you mean sea lion? Well, with no air force, navy is useless as well and would have no fuel. Then it becomes a cakewalk. You can just build 10,000 gliders and send as many men as you want. Or build a bridge across the channel. Basically navy is helpless to air power, if you actually get air superiority but they never did.

It's another crappy design but I did not want to make up whole new ones. There is no reason it HAD to be crappy though. It was Hitler's dumb obsession, which he got by listening to his 'experts' way back in the 30s.

Well, I did not want to replan out the entire German war production. I don't think the 88s did much good at all except that they probably did force the planes to fly higher when making bomb runs. That might be kind of significant though.

I was tempted to just remove all AA gun production I mean no one makes AA guns today. But I don't think it's fair to apply that much hindsight to a scenario if you are going to say it's a realistic scenario.

If they did everything just so in decades of preparation Poland could also have theoretically have beaten Germany but it would require having a kind of knowledge they did not have back then.

All of the changes I made are not changes it requires a supergenius from the future with absolute military knowledge to make. They are all changes that certain people at the time already knew were the best course and yet were overruled time and again by bad management.

Von Richtoffen summarily canceled the Ju87 as too slow and too lightly armed, but Udet uncancelled it, for example.

This scenario is basically what I think would happen if Goering and Udet were more competent, and Hitler did not place his own demands on the Luftwaffe like pushing bombers way too much when it made no sense, and pushing for massive amounts of AA guns.

The Mosquito fighter bomber proves this wrong. Made of all wood, but more able in dogfights than a spitfire and more successful pound for pound as a bomber than any other bomber in the war.

 

Bullshit.

You can't build a bridge across the Channel, not in any sort of reasonable time frame. If you could, it would have been done already, probably in place of the Chunnel.

Glider infantry alone can't hold much of anything for long. Glider infantry rely on either facing limited forces or getting reinforcements in a hurry lest they be overrun, as they can only bring minimal heavy weapons with them. Not to mention the British would be quite willing to uncork the chemical weapons bottle.

And above all, air superiority does not actually render ships helpless. See, a dirty secret that's not often talked about is that a large surface force that's willing to ignore heavy losses can shrug off quite a lot of airpower in WWII. The British around Crete took heavy losses, but the Germans didn't come even close to sinking the whole fleet. Sibuyan Sea saw a large Japanese fleet get attacked by over 300 aircraft and only lose a battleship and a cruiser. The British are going to be in full "Damn the torpedoes" mode if Sea Lion goes ahead; they won't care about losses with the survival of the nation at stake. And the British fleet is larger than both the Japanese one at Sibuyan Sea and the British fleet at Crete; the former had five battleships, 9 cruisers, and 13 destroyers, while the latter had 2 battleships, 14 cruisers, and 24 destroyers. Meanwhile, September 1940 OTL saw the British field two battlecruiser, three battleships, and eight cruisers, with the option to recall another battlecruiser, a carrier, three battleships, and 11 cruisers, not to mention a lot of destroyers.

And just FYI, with the state of the German Navy the Luftwaffe does need to sink all the Royal Navy ships, because even just a destroyer is going to wreak absolute havoc.

As for fuel, well, you're right that the British probably aren't going to be getting that much with German aircraft patrolling the Channel. However, they still have considerable stockpiles available, certainly enough for a death ride for glory, considering the kinds of operations Japan and Italy pulled off with even worse fuel situations.

 

Oh boy another wehraboo and his wonder waffle mass production spam would win the war nonsense.

 

Trying to get people to understand that war isn't like a video game and what you can build and field is largely defined by industrial and institutional developments and choices made years or even decades prior is hard.

 

Hmmm I have a feeling of familiarity....

Nah it cant be.

Anyway you would have to start way before, make all the right choices and the Brits make all the wrong ones.

 

Everything you post here is plain wrong and already addressed, just like your arguments defensing 88 AA guns. It's like pacific war never happened in your world and battleships still rule the waves.

 

You have a choice of what factories to make and what to produce in them, and they did in fact retool many factories during the war. The choices they made for the Luftwaffe were all bad.

Only 1/4 of planes made in 1939 were bombers.

 

Damn, I'm not reading through all of that.

Look, I don't deny that with minor tweaks, Germany COULD have had an air force capable of swatting down the RAF. They didn't need MORE planes, just a different TYPE of plane. If they had realized in the 1938-9 era that the Bf 110 was just not maneuverable enough to be a day fighter, and had concentrated on a long range option like the P-38 or Mustang, plus drop tanks for the 109, they might have had a shot of air superiority over the UK. But really the best that would accomplish is permitting some landings. You still have the Royal Navy to deal with, and barring a total war footing immediately in 1933 (which would have gotten the Allies off their asses earlier), you aren't going to have a navy that has parity with the Royal Navy; that's a huge issue. While air superiority will let you sink some ships, I see two things happening here.

1. The Navy abandons Scapa Flow and moves out of range of the German planes, marshalling them to repel the invasion.
2. With the RAF on it's heels, remaining assets are moved into hastily built bunkers, camoflaged positions, etc. to provide air cover for the Royal Navy when that day comes.

So when the Germans begin towing their coastal barges across the Channel, the English throw "all in," and bring their carriers and capital ships back into play. Who cares if some German units DO land? The main thing is to cut them off on the vine. I don't see how the Germans will manage to win this if even a handful of British ships get through to the Dover Straights/Calais area, covered by even a modest force of 100-200 fighters.

Sealion becomes possible with a fleet that is close to the RN in parity, and air superiority. Really given what Germany was going to have in 1940, it's only possible if the British are very, very stupid.

Hell if Germany is in that much better of a position than in OTL, the Brits might make only a token support of France, and marshall their resources for home island defense.

 

Thats because a modern multirole fighter can carry as much or more ordinance as a ww2 heavy bomber can, and deliver the bombs through a window. That doesnt work when you can barely hit a city block, Let alone a building.