Sorry if you guys have heard this question many times before...

Their only chance would be the Soviet leadership making one stupid mistake after another.

So yes, in theory it was possible to win the war, but chances for that were rather slim. The Soviets were great learners and never made the same mistake again.

>but do you think that the Axis Powers could have won WW2 if Stalingrad hadn't went the way it did?

Nazi-Germany would never have won the war, because they were more interested in causing destruction and doing evil things.

I mean ask yourself, is gassing, torturing and murder millions of people at the EXPENSE of winning a war, sound like rational people to you?

No. They were deranged.

>There was a real chance of utter Soviet collapse in the initial stages of the Eastern Front
what rot, if that was such a real possibility then why didn't it happen?

What kind of stupid question is that?

No, Stalingrad was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with this whole frontline/offensive. But it would have prolonged the war, which in turn could have made germany the first target for the a-bomb

>muh evil
You sound like the textbook example of a good goy

Ok, let's say the Germans capture Stalingrad. Then what happens? The whole point of Hitlers campaign to the South was to cut Russia from the oil fields of Azerbaijan and get that oil for the German army which was already suffering from the lack of fuel.

Now look at the map: Stalingrad is still over 1000 kilometers away from the Baku oil field. Between them is the Caucasus mountain range, one of the most rugged terrain in Eurasia, which at this point would be full of Russian soldiers and Partisans. So after presumably taking heavy casualties in Stalingrad the German army would have to try and fight through all those mountains while further stretching their overextended supply lines. And even if they get there, Stalin would have more than enough time to just destroy all the oil industry there and make sure the Germans won't be getting any fuel.

Capturing Stalingrad also wouldn't rob the Red Army from its fuel supplies. Even if the Red Army controls the Volga, the Soviets could still transport fuel through Northern Iran, which was under Soviet occupation since September 1941. They also had oil production in Central Asia.

And tactically, the Red Army didn't really win IN Stalingrad, rather near it. The reason they won the battle was that the Germans kept sending troops into the city and left their front line weak at the North and South of Stalingrad
(
>trusting Italians and Romanians to hold your flank
>ever )
This allowed Zhukov to break through there and encircle the Germans fighting in the city. He could still do it if the Germans captured Stalingrad and tried to advance through the Caucasus, stretching their front even thinner.

tl;dr Stalingrad could at best be a Pyrrhic victory for Hitler.

Correction:
>Even if the Red Army controls the Volga

Sorry, I meant the German army.

There's no "muh" about it. It clearly was evil.

Yes they were all just evil demons.

>Yes they were all just evil demons.

No, they were evil humans.

>Nazi-Germany would never have won the war, because they were more interested in causing destruction and doing evil things.
>I mean ask yourself, is gassing, torturing and murder millions of people at the EXPENSE of winning a war, sound like rational people to you?
>No. They were deranged.

Show me on the doll where the rabbi touched you. Did the moil botch your circumcision making it hard for you to peepee? Why are you a self hating jew? Was your mother too overbearing bubbeluh? Did you disappoint your family by not becoming a Dr or marrying a shiksa?

Well, as a regime, he's right. The nazis were inept conquerors and administrators and held ideological beliefs that can only be viewed as one step short of lunacy. Have you read their own texts on what they believe? Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote the second most influential text in nazi germany, was a fucking mad man.

Meanwhile people like Mengele were being sponsored to see if you could change someone's eyecolor by injecting blue ink into their eyeballs. Their scientists rejected the special theory of relativity outright because the viewed it as "Jewish" and instead tried to come up with their own Aryan variant. Göering was made chief of the Luftwaffe but apart from being a fighter pilot ace in the previous war, he had no experience whatsoever at commanding aerial warfare. That alone had enormous consequences on the evacuation at Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain - a battle which could infact have been much more severe for the British had there been a competent commander in charge who would take advantage of things like radio and not give orders that made no strategic sense whatsoever.

I mean, of course I'm right.

Millions of people also died in the Stalinist gulag, but they were used as slave labor at least, and people can actually find meaning in laboring, even if the laboring is horrible and you know you're going to die.

Getting people to carry a 200 pound bag of sand back and forth 500 meters for 12 hours straight while laughing at them and then shooting their kids in the head, is something entirely different.(yes this actually happened in Auschwitz)

The Russians would have just employed a scorched earth policy. As another guy has already said, the Russians would have rather burned down their homes themselves than let the Germans take shelter inside.

How long could their forces last when everywhere they go is a frozen wasteland with burnt crops and bombed out buildings?

Thats and incredibly shallow and absurd way to look at it. WW2 wasnt some b-movie

No it isn't. It's literally the only way to explain it, just like using the word "evil" is the only way to explain Carl Panzram, the Columbine kids, Ted Bundy and Oskar Dirlewanger.

These people hate existence so much, that it's not enough for them to simply end their own life, they have to take everyone with them, preferably and aesthetically in most painful manner possible.

How long would the Russians last in that scenario?

imo the best chance for Germans was in 1941, just focus on Moscow-Gorkiy region (most of the reinforcements came from here anyways) and be more diplomatic - treat those you conquered as anything but filth under your shoes, build on hatred towards the Russians or anyone else and voilá, they've got a chance.

And, as was mentioned, just get competent people in charge of shit. Battle of Britain was so badly executed by the Germans (shifting the focus from aifields on cities with 0 strategic value and thus letting the RAF become a valid enemy once again), not wasting resources on stupid ideological shit (just use the jews as work force en mass, they can die slowly, nobody would care)... so many things.

I am not really aware of how the economical situation was in Japan, from what I know they suffered from oil shortages but if they had just kept in line and focused on China (maybe poking the Soviets, forcing them to keep forces in the East, idk) instead of attacking the US...

Do you guys think the USA would enter the war had Japan not attacked them?
Would they "help" in creating a situation similar to WW1 (forced into war by German submarines attacks)?

yes user, nazi germany was a land of mustache twirling villains. Thats totally not a shallow way to look at it. They were just the spawn of satan

Now who is shallow? The fact that this is what you gleaned from what I said makes you shallow moron.

not him, but

>How long would the Russians last in that scenario?

Reasonably long. Wartime economies are fairly robust, especially in authoritarian regimes.

>imo the best chance for Germans was in 1941, just focus on Moscow-Gorkiy region

And ignore Kiev and those hundreds of thousands of troops there? When they roll up your right flank, what then?

>treat those you conquered as anything but filth under your shoes, build on hatred towards the Russians or anyone else and voilá, they've got a chance.

You already had hundreds of thousands of Hiwis, and they were mostly worthless. What's another few hundred thousand going to get you?

> (shifting the focus from aifields on cities with 0 strategic value and thus letting the RAF become a valid enemy once again),

The RAF was always a valid enemy. Airfield destruction was for a couple of weeks lowering the strength of ONE fighter group. When they rotate another one in and erase your gains, what then? If you want to break British morale (as Sealion was already scuppered) you need to hit cities at some point.

>I am not really aware of how the economical situation was in Japan, from what I know they suffered from oil shortages but if they had just kept in line and focused on China (maybe poking the Soviets, forcing them to keep forces in the East, idk) instead of attacking the US...

Then their economy does collapse, because lolnooil. Plus, the Soviets kept considerable forces in the Far East as it was. It's doubtful the Japanese could have kept to the offense in China and the USSR simultaneously.

>Do you guys think the USA would enter the war had Japan not attacked them?

As long as Britain is in the war and beleaguered? Yes, eventually.

Did he forget #notall ? Not all Nazis were bad. Only the radical ones. Only thosr nazis who didn't represent naziism were bad. They ruined everything for the moderate nazis. Naziism is a party of piece. Mein Kampf doesn't say anything bad about the Jews, you are just translating it wrong.

The US would have nuked Berlin

But how did I misrepresent your post exactly? All you say is that they were all just evil-
Lets have a look:

>they were more interested in causing destruction and doing evil things
>It clearly was evil
>they were evil humans
>they were all like psycopathic mass murderers

Stop namecalling and actually tell me how it isnt exactly your point that they were all just inhuman monsters or some sort of 2-dimensional movie characters

thats just a strawman.

>I am not really aware of how the economical situation was in Japan, from what I know they suffered from oil shortages but if they had just kept in line and focused on China (maybe poking the Soviets, forcing them to keep forces in the East, idk) instead of attacking the US...

Japan had to either attack the US or the Dutch Indies in order to gain the oil supply they needed to sustain their fledgling empire, their war efforts in china and mainland ambitions.

Essentially, US pressured the Japanese to either get out of China or suffer an oil embargo. The Japanese could not survive without oil and had but 18 months of oil supply left. But to retreat out of China was unthinkeable to them, so they had to go to war with the US and secure Dutch oil fields in the process.

Sure, they could have just went straight for the Dutch oil fields, but the Philippines, an american colony, was in the way so the US would be able to control the sea routes to and from Japan.

>But how did I misrepresent your post exactly?

Oh I don't know. Look at the answers:

>muh evil
>"evil demons" caricature
>"shallow and absurd"

I mean, I can flesh out my argument better if you want, but I don't know if I feel like it, because your objections are about as retarded as a 5 year olds would be.

My first post *LITERALLY* said that it's obvious they were evil for the specific reason that they IGNORED their war aims so they could continue torturing and murdering Jews and other undesirables.

Now if that's not evil, what the fuck is?

1944 on they diverted increasingly large resources to genocide instead of, you know, fighting the war.

>and be more diplomatic - treat those you conquered as anything but filth under your shoes
Kind of hard when your entire ideology is that Germans have an inherent racial superiority to all others so therefore anything a German does to a non-german is automatically justified.

Well, that and the fact that FDR had guaranteed the sovereignity of the possessions of the Dutch Government-in-Exile. Whether or not he was bluffing is hard to say, but the Japanese at least took it seriously.

In 1944, the war was already lost, and the writing was on the wall. You fight wars to achieve certain political aims: If winning the war is now unfeasible, you try to achieve your aims, or as much as possible, without winning the war.

The holocaust is retarded

>Look at the answers:
I just repeated what you said in a slightly hyperbolic way to show how absurd your statements seem to me. And yes, "they are just evil" is a very shallow way to look at it.

So again, how the fuck did I misrepresent your posts, when all of them just said "they were evil" or some variation of this?

You really come across like you think germany was a land of caricatures.

I also dont think your statement about ignoring their war aims is very accurate. Pretty sure a lot of krauts were at a frontline somewhere not even knowing about any torturing.

> Wartime economies are fairly robust
I was talking about the "russians just burn everything and go away" - the question is about where would they go, where would they live and so on.

>When they roll up your right flank, what then?
You hold them and end the war politically. Stalin wasn't worried for his life for no reason at all, the Soviets were not as loyal and patriotic as the communists would like them to be - that¨s where "treating captured soldiers and conquered people like humans" comes into play. You've got much more solid backlines that aren't crawling with partysans and you've got much more support from the countries - almost every occupied country has done the least amount possible to help the Germans, the occupied territories were of almost no use to them because of that.

> The RAF was always a valid enemy.
Yes, but even those in charge admitted (after the war) that the airfield raids were destroying their ability to fight and they were running low on aircraft (read up on how they were recovering everything that crashed into ground).
> If you want to break British morale you need to hit cities at some point.
No. No you fucking don't. How much impact did the raids on London (or anywhere else) have? How much effect did the raids on Germans cities have? Almost none, very small at best. Which is, considering the amount of resources required to perform it, rather silly. The idea that you can bomb enemy into submission was widespread (The Bomber mafia, USA?) and simply ineffective.

>As long as Britain is in the war and beleaguered? Yes, eventually.

The question is how and wether if would affect the amount of American support during those years to all the sides - be it to the Soviets or the British. Or even to the Germans, because even they got some (and even after 1941 which is funny imo).

>I also dont think your statement about ignoring their war aims is very accurate

Then you need to actually read more Holocaust literature because that is the conclusion every historian has come to, even Hugh Trevor-Roper agrees as such.

You don't genocide 6 million Jews and 5 million others without seriously hampering your ability to do war with several nations at a time.

"Control" - we are in a hypothetical situation where the US is not in war with Japan and thus this control is basically of no use to them. Unless they would offer Philippines bases to the British it means nothing and that seems highly unlikely.

Honestly who would care. The only person limited by this ideology was Hitler himself and he could do literally what he wanted - had he just went "it's ok, Slavs are our mates now" nobody would give a shit.
The Soviet Union was supposed to be communist state and look how it turned out.

Yes it most certainly was. I just don't understand what drives someone to think that millions deserve death simply because of an accident of birth. Something they never chose that had nothing to do with their actions or politics.

An autocrat looking for a scapegoat is one thing, but it seems that nazi leadership genuinely believed their own bs.

>I was talking about the "russians just burn everything and go away" - the question is about where would they go, where would they live and so on.

Further east into their heartlands.

>You hold them and end the war politically.

And if you don't? Those troops are much easier to take out when they're enveloped than when they have a broad front to attack on and catch you in between their forces to the northeast.

> Stalin wasn't worried for his life for no reason at all, the Soviets were not as loyal and patriotic as the communists would like them to be - that¨s where "treating captured soldiers and conquered people like humans" comes into play. You've got much more solid backlines that aren't crawling with partysans

Except you had partisan resistance everywhere the Germans set foot. They weren't rounding up Greeks and massacring them with the intent to replace the population, you still had fairly stiff Greek partisan resistance. And the fact that many Soviet troops were overrun, pocketed, but managed to escape formed nuclii of resistance groups.

>Yes, but even those in charge admitted (after the war) that the airfield raids were destroying their ability to fight and they were running low on aircraft (read up on how they were recovering everything that crashed into ground).

You're making this up. The airfield raids were not destroying their ability to fight. The period of time where RAF fighter strength went down lasted for 10 days, and was still up at their nadir from the BoB's start. Meanwhile , the Germans are taking heavy losses themselves, and can't keep this up indefinitely.

And yes, everyone recovers everything they can. The Germans did that too when it was raids over their territory.

>No. No you fucking don't. How much impact did the raids on London (or anywhere else) have? How much effect did the raids on Germans cities have? Almost none, very small at best. Which is, considering the amount of resources required to perform it, rather silly. The idea that you can bomb enemy into submission was widespread (The Bomber mafia, USA?) and simply ineffective.

Something which wasn't known to either air command at the time. How much effect did bombing airfields have? Say you reduce the RAF strength by another hundred fighters or so. Then what? You either need to invade (not happening), or you need to destroy their will to fight (also probably not happening). But targeting the airfields at best only makes striking at a successive target or targets easier, it's not a strategic goal in and of itself.

>The question is how and wether if would affect the amount of American support during those years to all the sides - be it to the Soviets or the British.

Impossible to determine with complete accuracy: While the Lend-Lease act was signed in March of 1941, it's hard to say how much the U.S. economy would have ramped up to provide LL in absence of war.

>Further east into their heartlands.
There is nothing. Literally nothing. Just empty land, and once upon few hudnred kilometers a city supplied from elsewhere, build around some huge mine or a factory. You can't run a state in such conditions - or at least not a state capable of fighting the Nazi Germany. You simply lack the basic resources, the conditions are not fitting.

>And if you don't?
Then you lost, but you did so anyways - and you might be capable of defeating them, but basically anything is better than what happened (as that did not only not work out but was objectively bad).
>Except you had partisan resistance everywhere the Germans set foot.
Not true. Look at Czech Republic - until mr. Beneš had the great idea of sending paratroopers to kill Heydrich it was pretty ok, but once the Germans annihilated two villages it all went to shit. The same goes for France, the French resistance grew the more atrocities the Germans have commited and that can be applied everywhere else, be it Ukraine, Yugoslavia or anything else. Of course you had small groups that formed almost immediately but they usually lacked the support of the people until those people were treated like shit by the Germans.
>You're making this up.
I don't remember the source right now, I will try to find it later on, but most books I read were from public library so it might be hard. If I do I'll make a thread.

>hampering your ability
Yeah, but thats not what you said.
You said they ignored the war because they are so evil.

"They are evil" is still an absurd and shallow way to look at it.
So again, how the fuck did I misrepresent your posts, when all of them just said "they were evil" or some variation of this?

>You said they ignored the war because they are so evil.

No, I said "gassing, torturing and murdering millions of people at the EXPENSE of your war aims" is evil.

>Then what?
Obtaining air superiority is the first step in actually preparing for anything else regarding Britain. Without the means to cover their ships in the La Manche and surrounding areas the Germans would have had much easier time doing literally anything - be it attacking the naval supply lines, the Navy itself or even (wether it would end good or bad for them) trying for an amphibious landing (unrealistic imo, but Hitler did other stupid shit).

Any attempt to regain air superiority when your positions are this stable is extremely hard - your fighters have to start further (thus having longer reaction time and less actual time to fight) while your enemy is only improving his own conditions.

>Something which wasn't known to either air command at the time.
And suddenly somebody thought of it later on. That's how that shit works, somebody comes up with an idea. Somebody came up with the idea that bombing cities is the best (herr Göring and his wast experience with strategical side of aerial warfare thought the same).
If somebody had the chance of trying out this "new" tactics it was the Germans - they even did for some time before Göring redirected it - as we can clearly see they weren't afraid to try new stuff.

>There is nothing. Literally nothing. Just empty land, and once upon few hudnred kilometers a city supplied from elsewhere, build around some huge mine or a factory. You can't run a state in such conditions - or at least not a state capable of fighting the Nazi Germany. You simply lack the basic resources, the conditions are not fitting.

Saratov, Penza, Gorki, Kazan, Kuybuyshev, Perrin, Ufa, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Magnitgorsk, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, Semipalatinsk, Karaganda; there were plenty of large communities, and they were mostly supplied from the surrounding countryside, same as any modern state, you definitely can sustain a war from that, since that's where most of the war economy came from in real life, after evacuating entire factories brick by brick, to said locations.

>Then you lost, but you did so anyways - and you might be capable of defeating them, but basically anything is better than what happened (as that did not only not work out but was objectively bad).

No, I'm pretty sure your plan is worse than the one historically given. Letting large armies mobilize at your rear when you had an opportunity to take them out relatively easily is usually considered a dumb idea.

You're forgetting the trade embargo, the reason the Japs went to war in the first place.

oh alright. I was confused because you later claimed
>My first post *LITERALLY* said that it's obvious they were evil for the specific reason that they IGNORED their war aims so they could continue torturing and murdering Jews and other undesirables.

And you also said
>they were more interested in causing destruction and doing evil things
Which kind of underlines the fact, that you have this shallow notion of all Nazis being evil for the sake of being evil like they are some cartoon characters

>Obtaining air superiority is the first step in actually preparing for anything else regarding Britain.

Except that you can't keep air superiority vis a vis Britain. They're outproducing you on both planes and pilots, and have airbase access where you don't.

>Without the means to cover their ships in the La Manche and surrounding areas the Germans would have had much easier time doing literally anything

You do realize that the British attacked German gathered vessels in the Rhine during the Blitz, right? That by attacking at night they negated the bulk of the then current German fighter advantage?

>be it attacking the naval supply lines, the Navy itself

Both are out of fighter reach. It doesn't matter how much of an advantage you have if your 109s can't cover your bombers to the target and he can wait there for you.

Not to mention that this entire airfield plan can be blasted apart by simply pulling back to bases in the Midlands if things got too hot.

>Any attempt to regain air superiority when your positions are this stable is extremely hard

No it isn't. You can build a simple dirt airfield in hours. Paved ones in a couple of days. If you have the planes, the air superiority re-asserts itself in relatively short time; especially if you move back in the winter when the weather's bad and it's hard to launch strikes.

>And suddenly somebody thought of it later on.

You're missing the point: it's not about tactical or strategic innovation. Bombing the fighters is a means to a later goal, not a goal in and of itself. Britain isn't going to lose war production, or bow out of the war, because a bunch of Hurricanes and Spitfires got bombed on the ground. You need to use that air advantage (while it lasts) to do something more substantive. Bombing cities was an attempt to attack at the morale of the British, since that was about the only target they had available.

>Which kind of underlines the fact, that you have this shallow notion of all Nazis being evil for the sake of being evil like they are some cartoon characters

No, the point is that their genocidal behavior can't be explained rationally.

And if it can't be explained rationally, what's left do you suppose?

Your mistake is that you're assuming that I use the word "evil" lightly, like I am being flippant.

I'm not. At all.

We're considering an attack on Indonesia because of the oil fields - just while ignoring the Philippines. Attacking Indonesia would have a bit smaller effect on the American public than killing their boyz at Pearl Harbor did.
>Gorki
That's right behind Moscow. I am talking about the are behind Ural - which is what was mentioned first, a scenario (not mine) where the Soviets just burn this shit and go back. But back is Siberia with so little arrable land it is ridiculous.

>And if it can't be explained rationally
Well some of them followed a worldview, that made them feel responsible for the "purity" and optimal future of their race. They thought the jews were just evil and therefor had to be destroyed for the sake of "muh reich". They also believed in extreme genetic differences between races and therefot pushed eugenics.

Now they based their worldview on premisses that are proven to be wrong, and some of their actions are even morally wrong and repulsive regardless of that by the standards of our worldview. But there is a rational explanation behind it. It was consistent with the way they understood the world (the nazi leaders at least). They werent doing this for the sake of being evil. Thats why I think it is a shallow way to look at it. Real wars are never just 100% good people against 100% pure evil

>That's right behind Moscow

Ok, so that still leaves 12 of the 15 cities I mentioned, and plenty more that I didn't, as well as the argument structure surrounding them.

>But back is Siberia with so little arrable land it is ridiculous.

Yeah, it wasn't like a lot of Lend Lease was food or anything.

>Except that you can't keep air superiority vis a vis Britain.
I have to disagree once again. If WW2 had been solely about numbers the Germans would have never gotten out of Germany - and even be it so, the British lost more, so the higher numbers in production aren't as relevant.
> BEAVERBROOK [ii] stated to the MASTER of the METRO [KHOZYAIN METRO][iii] that in the period 14th-16th August 72 SPITFIRES were lost and in the same period 75 were received from the factories. 32 HURRICANES were lost and 50 received, together with 12 DEFIANTS, i.e. production is covering losses.
t. United States National Security Agency

>That by attacking at night they negated the bulk of the then current German fighter advantage?
Event, operation name? Might have forgotten, but that seems unlikely.

>Both are out of fighter reach. It doesn't matter how much of an advantage you have if your 109s can't cover your bombers to the target and he can wait there for you.
...what? I mean, for real. If you have total air control you still can't attack the enemy ships because... why again? If the ships are forced to stay at ports they aren't a threat. If they move out, they are a target.

> Not to mention that this entire airfield plan can be blasted apart by simply pulling back to bases in the Midlands if things got too hot.
You put yourself at a disadvantage by doing so (longer response time once again) and still aren¨t anyhow secure - if you lost air control over the territory until that point, nothing is preventing attacks on those airfields too (the range is a bit further north, but yeah, it would have been harder - for both sides).

>Bombing the fighters is a means to a later goal, not a goal in and of itself.
The goal being to put RAF out of fight to enable anything else - bombing of factories, covering your operations, disrupting enemy supply lines. This goal is the first that needs to be addressed.

>We're considering an attack on Indonesia because of the oil fields - just while ignoring the Philippines. Attacking Indonesia would have a bit smaller effect on the American public than killing their boyz at Pearl Harbor did.

Absolutely, but so why didnt the Japanese just go for that solution?

>Ok, so that still leaves 12 of the 15 cities I mentioned
desu I didn't even bother checking the others after I saw Gorki in there, but my point (which I forgot to write after I accidentaly closed the window instead of sending the message) is that these areas aren't producing enough - and while LL could provide something, not even the Americans could feed the Russian nation had it "escaped" behind the Ural. Even when it didn't they had truble supplying them, they also had to care about other regions and so on.
If your argument is "the USA would selflessly supply the Russians until they won" - ok, point taken.
By retreating there though, the Germans have received what they wanted - most of the resources they needed lie in front of Ural and abandoning that area would simply give it to them - be it oil or basically anything from Eastern Ukraine.

>In 1944, the war was already lost, and the writing was on the wall. You fight wars to achieve certain political aims: If winning the war is now unfeasible, you try to achieve your aims, or as much as possible, without winning the war.

Or more like, when the war went badly the Nazi's decided against spending valuable supplies to maintain the ghettos. Instead they exterminated those of the residents that could not be used as slave labor.

Can you repeat the question?

Because of extremely complicated relations between the soldiers, lower officers and higher ranking officers - the higher ranking felt pressured by the younger, the younger by the soldiers and society while the common soldiers by society and the higher ranking. Japanese people wanted to fight as much as almost nobody else (or at least to my knowledge). I have probably gotten the implications wrong but that's part of the reason - it was a clusterfuck that nobody knew how to deal with.
And they were hoping that the Americans would pussy out. Bad idea - they started doing that only when liberals arised (hello Vietnam, my old friend).

not selflessly probably, I don't know the proper word - "without getting anything in return and with little hope to receive compensation for their investment"

>I have to disagree once again. If WW2 had been solely about numbers the Germans would have never gotten out of Germany - and even be it so, the British lost more, so the higher numbers in production aren't as relevant.

No, the Germans lost roughly 3 planes for every 2 they destroyed in the BoB. The loss ratio was even worse when it came to pilots and aircrew.

>Event, operation name? Might have forgotten, but that seems unlikely.

I'm blanking on the operation name, but the raids on Ostend in September of 1940; I read about them in Bomber Command by Hastings, but at least a quick online search gets drowned out for stuff from WW1.

>hat? I mean, for real. If you have total air control you still can't attack the enemy ships because... why again? If the ships are forced to stay at ports they aren't a threat. If they move out, they are a target.

Me-109s don't have that kind of operational range. They only had about 10-20 minutes of fighting capability over London, nevermind if you go further north. You won't ever have total air control, because you can't reach northern England with your fighters. As long as the RN isn't completely retarded and bases their ships as far north as Liverpool or Hull, you'll have to bomb them unprotected by fighter cover.

>You put yourself at a disadvantage by doing so (longer response time once again) and still aren¨t anyhow secure - if you lost air control over the territory until that point, nothing is preventing attacks on those airfields too (the range is a bit further north, but yeah, it would have been harder - for both sides).

No, because the Me-109 doesn't have enough of a fuel tank to reach that far, not if they want to go back home. And since you can't advance your airfields further north without taking ground in England proper, thus necessitating a sealion, you're stuck.

>The goal being to put RAF out of fight to enable anything else - bombing of factories, covering your operations, disrupting enemy supply lines. This goal is the first that needs to be addressed.

Except that said goal isn't being achieved. Your own quote demonstrates that they were receiving more fighters than they were losing.

>desu I didn't even bother checking the others after I saw Gorki in there, but my point (which I forgot to write after I accidentaly closed the window instead of sending the message) is that these areas aren't producing enough

Except a tremendous amount of war material WAS historically produced in Siberia, which you then deflected by talking about food. Not to mention that you're talking about a hypothetical in which Germany concentrates on Moscow, takes that area, and then waits, which does not secure the Caucasus nor the Ukraine.

>By retreating there though, the Germans have received what they wanted - most of the resources they needed lie in front of Ural and abandoning that area would simply give it to them - be it oil or basically anything from Eastern Ukraine.

Except the Germans had historically shit-tier ability to actually extract resources from conquered Russian areas. They held Maikop for over a year and never got its oil production up to a third of what it was for the Soviets.

Yeah, and they went into Hungary and Romania and started exterminating all the Jews there that weren't being kept in ghettos and weren't being supplied by them!

That's not entirely true. The Japanese wanted to avoid a fight with the US to the last and there was a faction amongst them that knew they couldn't win a prolonged war against them.

The Philippines is why they couldn't avoid the US. The Philippines sat at the crossing between Japan and the Dutch East Indies and a US that was allowed to build up strength in the Philippines would have been a much tougher nut to crack than the one that Japan thought they were facing in December, 1941. And they were right, of course.

> because you can't reach northern England
And you don't need to. You actually have no reason to aside from "I want to crush." You have to secure yourself areas that are important to you - you don't really need to care for what's happening in Northern England. All that interests you lies in your range - in Southern England. Yes, enemy starting from there isn't optimal but that's something you can't really do much about and it still puts the enemy at a disadvantage.
>thus necessitating a sealion
In order to do that you need the air superiority over the region - which is not achievable by bombing London over and over again. Or any other average British city for that matter.

>And you don't need to.

I thought you mentioned that you wanted to destroy the Royal Navy or to keep supplies from getting in. When said navy and supplies can be based or brought in from Northern England, you kind of need to hit it if this plan is to work.

>In order to do that you need the air superiority over the region - which is not achievable by bombing London over and over again. Or any other average British city for that matter.

You also need a hell of a lot more than air superiority over southern England, you need more or less total air supremacy (not likely) a way to transport troops and invade beaches, the ability to resupply your men when they land, interdiction to prevent all 22-28 (depending on invasion date) British divisions from jumping down the throat of your invasion force, and to protect your lifeline when they land; since it's probably going to take close to a month to build up sufficient forces on the shores to push further inland.

Which is why, eventually, the Sealion plan was abandoned, and thus securing air superiority over southern England is meaningless unless you're going to actually target things in it.

>Except that said goal isn't being achieved.
Being a few planes in surplus doesn't represent the current situation in the air which is what matters and the was going on on the German side.
>Except a tremendous amount of war material WAS historically produced in Siberia
It's not only food. It's everything that's not somehow metal and people still need it to live. Even as it was the US were delivering so many things, be it clothes, whole vehicles, processed resources...
>Not to mention that you're talking about a hypothetical in which Germany concentrates on Moscow, takes that area, and then waits, which does not secure the Caucasus nor the Ukraine.
No. This whole "Soviets won't secure their needs if they go behind the Ural" was a response to a diferent post claiming they could've retreated there and simply win by that, it has nothing to do with mine post that is based on completely diferent set of goals for the whole German advancement through Europe, not only Soviet Union.
>Except the Germans had historically shit-tier ability to actually extract resources from conquered Russian areas.
Yes. That's why MY post was about at the start - that one of the biggest German mistakes was treating the population like shit, resulting in shit production from conquered areas.
In a French book (forgot the name, bad head for that), that is focused on Indochina war there are memoirs of a random dude that just grew up a teenager in France during war - and even he was "tricking" the system by cutting shorter logs (which was labor he had to do for the Germans - the logs were transferred elsewhere to be used). Just an example - most of the people in the conquered lands where against the Germans which was inevitable in case of most Western countries, but completely avoidable in the east - they just had to not be THE nazis they were.
And as I said, this was completely in Hitler's competence to ensure - it is unlikely that the SS would act the way they did had it been forbidden.

>I thought you mentioned that you wanted to destroy the Royal Navy or to keep supplies from getting in.
No, that wasn't even the German goal - that was unachiavable for Germany (or anyone else aside from maybe America at the time). It is all about securing the space over southern England for your forces and plans, whatever they might be.
The Navy can sit in their ports the whole war - the point is to prevent them from going to the La Manche because of your planes having complete control over the are (or over the coast of France or anywhere the supplies where coming from).
>way to transport troops and invade beaches, the ability to resupply your men when they land
As I said. Air superiority over the region is the way of achieving this - the only possible way for the Germans (aside from some crazy missions like the Italian manned torpedoes were, that could work too lol).
>interdiction to prevent all 22-28 (depending on invasion date) British divisions
Let's not pretend that those divisions were actually capable of stopping the Wehrmacht on land during this time period, please. The British could send out so many planes because they were focused on that. They still haven't recovered from what they forgot at Dunkirk.
>since it's probably going to take close to a month to build up sufficient forces on the shores to push further inland.
t. my head
The best thing the French did in the whole war was destroying their own navy and thus saving the British their ass. But still it wasn't completely unrealistic to transport the soldiers (and supply them) if the Germans had managed to push RN out of the area - which was only doable through air superiority.

>Being a few planes in surplus doesn't represent the current situation in the air which is what matters and the was going on on the German side.

It means that RAF strength is not going down, it's going up, which is of course what was going on for the bulk of the conflict. It means that eliminating the RAF first and then moving on to other targets is a goal you're not actually reaching.

ww2db.com/doc.php?q=309

>It's not only food. It's everything that's not somehow metal and people still need it to live. Even as it was the US were delivering so many things, be it clothes, whole vehicles, processed resources...

And Soviets had enormous domestic production to. Yes, there was Lend-Lease, but you're ignoring how much crap got made in Siberia.

>No. This whole "Soviets won't secure their needs if they go behind the Ural" was a response to a diferent post claiming they could've retreated there and simply win by that,

No, the user whose remarks started never mentioned the Urals, he mentioned what would happen if the Germans won at Stalingrad. That's about a 1500 km distance you're just skipping over.

>In a French book (forgot the name, bad head for that), that is focused on Indochina war there are memoirs of a random dude that just grew up a teenager in France during war - and even he was "tricking" the system by cutting shorter logs (which was labor he had to do for the Germans - the logs were transferred elsewhere to be used). Just an example - most of the people in the conquered lands where against the Germans which was inevitable in case of most Western countries, but completely avoidable in the east - they just had to not be THE nazis they were.

Except, as you point out yourself, they weren't really getting significant resources out of the western countries they were nicer occupiers in.

>No, that wasn't even the German goal - that was unachiavable for Germany (or anyone else aside from maybe America at the time). It is all about securing the space over southern England for your forces and plans, whatever they might be.

But your plans are inevitably going to have to go back towards hitting cities, or some other strategic target; and since RAF strength is not declining, and you can't project any sort of time when you'll have the ascendancy, you can't wait for you to get air superiority and then hit the targets, you have to just hit the targets in contested airspace.

>As I said. Air superiority over the region is the way of achieving this - the only possible way for the Germans (aside from some crazy missions like the Italian manned torpedoes were, that could work too lol).

Air superiority will not make you have more transport ships, user. It won't make your river barges seaworthy. It won't train your people to make amphibious landings. It is necessary but insufficient.

>Let's not pretend that those divisions were actually capable of stopping the Wehrmacht on land during this time period, please. The British could send out so many planes because they were focused on that. They still haven't recovered from what they forgot at Dunkirk.

And why wouldn't they be? Those losses at Dunkirk aren't in the orgcharts. That's not even mentioning the severe equipment shortages the Heer would have given their inability to transport heavy equipment amphibiously.

cgsc.edu/CARL/nafziger/940BIEA.pdf

>t. my head

t. that's what it took for the Americans to do something similar between Overlord and Cobra, when they had far more shipping available, and total air supremacy, something which the Axis never had a hope of establishing.

>The best thing the French did in the whole war was destroying their own navy and thus saving the British their ass.

In 1942. Well after Sealion timetables.. And please explain how you're going to get them out of Gibraltar without being sunk by all the mines.

> But still it wasn't completely unrealistic to transport the soldiers (and supply them) if the Germans had managed to push RN out of the area - which was only doable through air superiority.

Yes it was.

Because

A) The Italian and French fleets can't leave the Med without securing Gibraltar, assuming the French don't scuttle their fleets. The Germans do not have sufficient transport capability to actually move their forces.

B) You can't stop the RN from striking into the channel at night, given your lack of night bombing capability. (Hell, German day bombing of naval vessels was nothing to write home about. 4 destroyers at Dunkirk is quite frankly, pathetic for uncovered ships standing still in daylight.) When you have half a dozen battleships moving at night and sinking everything in sight, you're going to be in a lot of trouble.

C) You can't stop the RN from basing somewhere like Hull and then striking out of it, and that doesn't change no matter how many planes you have.

D) Your air force is going to be busy come invasion day. You'll need to provide tactical support for your invaders, stop the RAF from attacking you, provide interdiction bombing to prevent British reinforcements, AND stop the RN from ending this whole parade. You don't have that many bombers.