I've been playing Axis and Allies recently, and it got me thinking...

The final solution was a major misallocation of resources.

>Preparing for a long, drawn out war rather than a quick war of encirclement as the Germans thought it would be
>Don't have Hitler as supreme commander
>Mass produce more Panzer IVs and Stugs rather than meme tanks like the Tiger
>Treat Ukrainians and Belorussians as allies rather than suppressing and murdering them.
>Stop relying on slave labor and allow unmarried/childless women to take over the factories
>Don't waste resources trying to round up Jews and transport them to camps. That can come later.
>Focus on British air fields and military industry rather than targeting civilians like retards
>Build more Sturmgewehrs and Panzerfausts. They're great.

But the point here is that you can't "take Russia early". The USSR was essentially immune to German invasion as long as it could continue to count on economic support from the USA and Britain.

The only way Germany could strip that benefit was by a) knocking the Western allies out of the war or b) gaining absolute naval supremacy. Neither of these are possible without inviting a two-front war of proportions equal to what historically occurred.

>But if they would have taken Russia early, they wouldn't have to take the war on two fronts which was their biggest downfall.

No, their biggest downfall was an ability to politically fight a limited war, or industrially fight a total war against 3 adversaries each of which outproduced them. Second front or no, Germany can't win.

> If Berlin was nuked by America, that may have been different, but whether or not America would have been able to develop nukes fast enough would be anyone's guess.

Of course they would develop nukes fast enough. What's the hurry? The longer the war lasts the longer the industrial disparity between America and Germany makes itself felt, and it's not like Germany can decisively invade England, let alone across the Atlantic.

They should have signed the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and then let the USSR invade Poland alone. Basically redirect the Allies' ire at the Soviets and take them down together. Then they could turn against Britain/France at a later time, possibly after letting them get weakened by a WW2 against the Soviets.

>They should have signed the Molotov Ribbentrop pact and then let the USSR invade Poland alone

Except the Soviets weren't that stupid and weren't going to invade until the Germans did it first. Hell, they waited 2 and a half weeks after the initial invasion to take their part.

>Impossible for German economy.
>Given, but ideologically impossible.
>Pz IV was not a good tank; more Panthers plox.
>Mebbe.
>Good idea.
>Yes.
>Wouldn't guarantee success of Sea Lion.
>Sturmgewehr poorly assembled.

Basically, a more limited Barbarossa.

You want the following:
>Capture/deny the large grouping of Soviet Industry which is in Belarus/Ukraine
>Eliminate the threat of Soviet bombers taking out Romanian oilfields
>Dominate the Baltic to protect vital Swedish trade
>Deliver a massive blow to Soviet war potential

How? You make the operational goal to end up roughly situated on the Donetz river down to Crimea and all the way up to Leningrad.

In a lot of ways this would resemble the real Barbarossa, except with the obvious difference of ignoring Moscow as a target altogether.

You have a stronger emphasis on the south, leaving Germany hundreds of miles closer to the Caucasus at the end of the year, an ideal launching pad for a 1942 offensive.

Leningrad with more emphasis could have been taken, as well.

Army Group Center would hence take a more defensive posture, leaving a large soviet salient situated around Smolensk.

Now, with numerous Soviet armies routed like in reality, you can now take a defensive posture. When the Soviets attack, you retreat, let them overextend, and cut them off. Eventually they'll weaken to the point where major offensive operations can continue.

In the meantime you make good use of the resources of Ukraine by not being dicks to the locals and creating a local Ukrainian nationalist government.

In real Barbarossa, Axis forces basically stopped at the Dniepr and used their strength in the push on Moscow, where Soviets were obviously strongest. I don't think reaching the Don is too optimistic.

Anyway, as the Soviets bleed themselves dry in your elastic defense (probably all planned by Manstein and Model), you can prepare for your 1942 offensive, either to destroy the Smolensk salient or push on to Baku.

I guess this is more "how to beat Russia" than how to win everything...

Getting in a war in the first place. If WWII didn't happen their country could've lived longer like Fascist Spain did.

Isn't attrition against the Soviets generally a bad idea?

This isn't trench warfare

Elastic defence would allow them to maintain a very favourable ratio

Let's ask the same question for Imperial Germany. What could they have done, if anything, to win WW1?

This. Barbarossa's initial success are very misleading. It was a failure even before the russians pushed the germans back from the gates of moscow. The germans were losing too much men in relation to the damage they were causing the russians for it to ever play out in the end.

Everyone knew it was a suicide operation from a pure military perspective, but the leaders thought it would succeed anyways. They thought that once the attack happened the incompetency of the jews would just result in the soviets offing themselves. It was total lunacy.

Germany was originally planning on allying with the Polacks, but at the last minute betrayed them when an alliance with the USSR presented itself. If they had gone through with the alliance with poland and waited for the USSR to attack them then they could have garnered a lot of international sympathy and good will by pretending to help the poles.

> ww1 fronts couldn't involve mobility meme
> ww2 fronts only involved mobility meme

memes from the same memeverse where you can just ignore stalin evacuating factories and get away with it and just "not be dicks" to slavs you're trying to enslave or eradicate. giving bandera an SS uniform is as nice as paranoia allows.

Not piss off England

By pressing the "liberated" slavic populations into service you should be able to significantly even out the population disparity.

Please. Germany did everything it could to please the perfidious albion. They promised to cut the number of ships in the navy as demonstration that they weren't trying to challenge the royal navy, and they even told the britbongs their plan to invade through Belgium ahead of time. None of that mattered though as they were too blood thirsty to NOT get involved in WW1.

That's a lot of words to say nothing

>Invade a guaranteed nation
>Upset that the Brits keep their promise

Which edition lad?

No matter how much revision you do it becomes apparent that it boils down to the Moscow or Ukraine strategy. That too has been debunked since there were 8 reserve divisions ready for the winter assault in 41-42 in Moscow, and we all knew what happened in Ukraine.

There was simply no war the germans could've re-allocated resources in WW2 to beat the soviets unless you restructure the entire war and its combatants.

Nothing really. Militarily the German army was punching above its weight anyway. It's just that their regime was incapable of winning over the occupied population and strike creative alliances because their reasons for going to war in the first place were dictated by a stiff ideology with unrealistic war goals skewed world view of themselves and their enemies.

How many times will this exact question be asked on this damn board?
I think I've seen 3 other threads in the past couple of days asking this exact same question.

They could have not diverted precious resources, industry, infrastructure, trains, and manpower to killing 12 million people because half of them had noses that were too big

>12 million

holy shit the number keeps getting bigger every year!

hey Shlomo get off my board

also

>implying the holohaux happened

Mass produced this,the StuG4 and avoided the wasteful battle of Kursk. Then throw everything you have at destroying oil production in the
Causcasus and cutting the Murmansk railway.

>trusting in nazis/commies

Dear God, the germans had a fuck "lucky"(Stalin bullshit) strike on Kiev how make Barbarossa by far easier.

That's actually not true. Barbarossa brought Germany closer to victory than most people would like to admit.

It was mostly the strategic flip flopping that prevented the Wehrmacht from achieving critical successes.

If the Afrikafeldzug is cancelled and the troops and resources are diverted towards the eastern Front there is a good foundation to deliver a more massive blow in a critical area. We are talking about 2 additional Panzerdivisions with 339 operational tanks.

These additional mobile forces could be used to bolster the strength of AG North so that instead of a siege it is very possible that Leningrad is conquered on the move according to the original Plan von Leeb had.

If Leningrad is captured the AG north could assume defensive positions and fortify these for the winter. In 42 a rather small spring/summer offensive to cut off Murmansk and thus a significant portion of lend and lease should be the key objective.

AG Center is critical. To really have a shot AG Center needs to be gutted to a degree. Most formations of the axis allies would be placed here so that more german formations could be used by AG South. The first goal historically was to reach Smolensk and assume defense positions there. After that HG Center would be reduced as it happened historically. It would be reduced stronger though with only a moderate reserve of mobile divisions to bolster defenses there. The rest of the forces would be commited to AG South.

AG South now should have appropriate forces to overrun the Ukraine fully (also fast enough to prevent the soviets from transferring critical industries). Crimea should only be cut off in 41 so that more troops are available to sustain a push towards Kharkov/Rostov/Kursk.

With that the moral and industrial/agricultural damage for the soviets is much higher in 41 with equal or even lower casualties for germany.

Main Goal for 42 are Stalingrad and oil as in OTL.

>hey Shlomo get off my board
/pol/ sure feels himself at home here

>Barbarossa brought Germany closer to victory than most people would like to admit.
>a lot of "ifs"

>We are talking about 2 additional Panzer divisions with 339 operational tanks.
More divisions to get be support by supply line full of problems.

Its quite simple

Germany needs to capture Leningrad, Moscow and Baku.

Japan needs to stop the US at Midway and Coral Reef and strike a decisive victory driving the American fleet of of the southern pacific and into Hawaii.

A clear Axis victory looks like this, All other events are details revolving around them.

There are many theories how this can be done and I have read many of them, but overall the Axis need to pull off a miracle, and this kind of victory is very hard to pull off.

11-12 million is the accepted number of people who died in the camps with the addition of Jews, gypsies,disabled people, homos, pows, political prisoners, and Czechs/poles sent there.

>mass produce stugs and panzer iv
People always say this but those tanks would have been absolutely btfo by t34s as well as by newer, heavier russian tanks, and the germans didnt have enough trained soldiers to crew them besides.
Their only chance was finding a wonder weapon.

>been absolutely btfo by t34s as well as by newer, heavier russian tank
Just use air support and tank destroyers.

2 German panzer divisions in the long run would have meant nothing in Stalingrad.

After 1941 the whole eastern front had to change strategically for the Germans instead of getting entrenched in a huge defensive position like Panther–Wotan line.

Germany did a lot of strategic blunders, with the biggest being Stalingrad. It was only after Stalingrad that Wehrmacht leadership realised they could not encircle or use Blitzkrieg tactics in a the huge defensive areas Russia had.

Only Manstein thought outside the box and pulled off a miraculous victory at Kharkov, but in the long run it was a hole in the water. Even he alone could not win the victory for Hitler alone.

>What are some of the things that the Nazis could/should have done in order to win?
Nothing. If you're up against an enemy that vastly outnumbers, outproduces you and has more resources there is nothing you can do.

>Other than not pissing off the US, of course.
This wasn't an option because the US have been supplying the enemies of Germany from the very beginning.

>yet more gear and manpower.

So basically delaying the inevitable.

OT Russia by 1944-45 fielded the strongest, biggest, and with the most tanks army in the world and world history.

Germany would have won some early victories against them but unless you take out their operation centers like Moscow or Leningrad you aren't doing shit.

Theoretically even without US-British intervention in France, Germany strategically should not extend the war even more. The Soviets as time passes get more lend lease from US and more troops/tanks that the can throw at the Germans without regard for casualties.

If Germany tried a southern push they would just get encircled and attacked from the north, without any natural land barrier protecting them like the Volga.

gay black hitler

A lovely thread as always

>tfw to smart to present my opinion and expose it to critique.

i exposed my penis to your mom's critique

she liked it more than your dad's

*dad

>2 German panzer divisions in the long run would have meant nothing in Stalingrad

These additional divisions could have been used to capture Leningrad in 41. If there is no huge siege considerable troops are freed up in the North. These troops could conduct a limited offensive in 42 to cut off Murmansk and enable to conduct more successful offensives on their stretch of the front.

>It was only after Stalingrad that Wehrmacht leadership realised they could not encircle or use Blitzkrieg tactics in a the huge defensive areas Russia had.

It could and did that very successfully. The problem was defending the gains against concentrated russian defenses afterwards. The problem with Stalingrad were the overstreched lines manned by unreliable allies. The soviets threatened to cut off the whole AG South and there weren't enough forces to secure the vital supply links AND break the pocket. Winning a at a certain point wasn't the problem in 41 or 42.

>More divisions to get be support by supply line full of problems.

That's true. The supply lines of AG North were by fat the best though. The Baltic States offered a much better road and rail network and the weather condition weren't as atrocious as in the center or south.

*enable the Finnish Army to conduct more successful offensives on their stretch...

Not invade Belgium.

Not used defensively...by 1943 Germany no longer had the fuel for large scale offensives so the thirsty Tiger was useless....StuG was the most effective weapon in the Battle of Kursk

The only wonder weapon that could've saved Germany was nukes and they fucked their chances of that long before WW2 broke out.

If they had Coordinated with the Japanese as opposed to looking at them as racially inferior. Then maybe the Japanese wouldn't have invaded Manchuria (the actually first shot of WWII. With actual coordination they could have rolled over the Soviets on two fronts. Instead, the Japs seemed to be merely looking for their own living space to set up an empire of their own.

>The Imperial Japanese Army
>Doing diddly shit in a land war against the Soviet Union

My sides. The resources Japan would have pulled to the far east would never have affected the outcome. Go back to 1905, Togo.

>Not get into war with UK
>Not invade USSR
>Not declare war on US
>Not get useless retards like Italy, Japan, and Romania as allies

Basically everything that dumb cunt Hitler did, do the opposite

>Not ally with Romania

Enjoy your no oil.

You really think that with the informatin they had at the time that Stalin's regime looked strong enough to survive a catastrophic invasion when the 300 year old dynasty of the Tsar couldn't last through a couple years of stalemate and minor victories?

The fucking funny thing is all these plebbit educated faggots get on here calling Hitler deluded, as if his entire General staff didn't agree with him. Even the US armed forces htought Russia would be done in within 6 months.

Italy looked pretty good on paper. Was total shit in real life. Of course Mussolini warned Hitler of this but Hitler didnt care.

>the Japanese
Kill yourself.

Yeah, throwing tanks into large, fortified cities for urban warfare is the greatest idea ever. Leningrad would have fallen in a week maximum at the hands of those 2 panzer divisions.

Why does Veeky Forums have so many axis victory "what if alien space bats blitzed London" type revisionist threads?

They're all the same boring shit

You haven't read tooze's wages of destruction and aren't qualified to comment

>the Japanese wouldn't have invaded Manchuria
>they could have rolled over the Soviets on two fronts
Sorry, how exactly are you imagining Japan taking the fight to the Soviets without invading Manchuria first?

If they didn't try to genocide the Jews they could have won. They shot themselves in the foot by wasting this human capital

Germany never stood a chance. Even if they'd taken Moscow the Soviets were just going to manage the war from Samara while industry continued to pour out weapons in the Urals.

The Wehrmacht didn't even inflict 2:1 on the battlefield

Win the 1st Marne and take Paris, you can probably force France to give up the fight and Britain wouldn't fight that front on their own. To do that would have probably involved a bit of luck with intelligence and positioning and all that, plus not withdrawing any extra forces to go east to fight the Russians even though they mobilized faster than expected. Winning early is basically the only way to win the Western Front.

Alternatively, play defense against France and don't invade Belgium, thus not getting Britain involved and not getting blockaded into submission. In the meantime, go ahead and crush Russia. With Russia defeated even earlier and no blockade to worry about, France will bleed themselves out first if they don't come to terms.

Before all of that, to make extra sure Britain doesn't get involved, don't waste money building up a navy to scare Britain with even though you aren't willing to use it.

>If they had Coordinated with the Japanese as opposed to looking at them as racially inferior.
The Nips had no chance of going toe-to-toe with the Soviets in Siberia even if they didn't bother with invading China or anywhere else. They had shit tanks, artillery etc. and would have been essentially restricted to rail lines for transport, making it trivially easy to defend against them.

In any event, look into the little border war between the Soviets and the Japs after Japan took Manchuria for a preview of what a Japanese invasion would have looked like, ex. the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.

Victory for Germany after their victories in France requires them to not go to war with the USSR. The two countries are so ideologically opposite that war would be inevitable, but instead of being the first on the offensive Germany would have to take a defensive stance.

And then you'd have one of two very hard to pull off scenarios:

Somehow get Britain to stop hating Germany and accept the German's position in western Europe. Paint the USSR as the common enemy and launch an offensive after a protracted period of gaining strength. Real life post-war Russia shows that the Soviet system didn't have much staying power so perhaps a policy of sending well trained operatives into Russia to perform assassinations and destabilize the region would lead to a weaker Russia over time.

The other option is to invest heavily into the nuclear option. Most of their good scientists in this department had already fled long ago, but perhaps given enough time the tech could have been developed or stolen from the United States. Luckily Germany did have all the rocket scientists so if a nuke could be made the jump to ICBMs could be made quickly.

However both of these are nigh impossible to pull off and would require a serious ideological shift in German policy. Perhaps if Hitler had been assassinated shortly after the French conquests and the helm was taken by someone more cautious.

>If they didn't try to genocide the Jews they could have won. They shot themselves in the foot by wasting this human capital

How do you come to that conclusion? Half a million Jews in Germany proper, as well as another 8-9 million in the various countries they occupied don't seem like they'd be nearly enough to turn the tide, even if they are all enthusiastic friends of the regime.

Yes, anyone with a brain should know an outside invasion will polarize people against the common threat, and politically the Russian empire and the ussr were not even remotely similar, the Germans thought it would be another game of take the Capitol they surrender. And it was not, their logistics also had a though time keeping up on the eastern front, that should have been far more important for the military planners as they should have known how shitty Russian infrastructure was, not to mention they went out of their way to make enemies of the people who would have helped them beat the ussr because of politics. They dug their own grave with their actions.

>If they had Coordinated with the Japanese as opposed to looking at them as racially inferior.
Hitler was a fucking weab and thought of them as honorary aryans

lol without Romania as a ally I don't Germany would have even been able to drive all their tanks to Russia

Or just look at the Russian invasion of Manchuria after the fall of Germany.
It was not pretty for the Japanese, they got run over.

To be fair, comparing the Red Army when they had no other active enemies in 1945 with a distracted Red Army of 41-42 is pretty disingenuous, although Japan would not be able to advance far, if at all.

More germane though to the course of the overall war is what happens with Lend-Lease. Pic related; most of it went through Vladivostok, and then had to travel along the one rail-line in the area to get anywhere important to the war effort. If the Japanese manage to seize just a bit of rail anywhere along the border, or take the city, or blockade the port, they can stop that pipeline cold.

I'm honestly not sure at all how much of the capacity could be redirected to other routes, or how expensive such an undertaking would be.

rate my plan
>no ribbentropp-molotov
>germans invade Poland, take only Danzig and maybe force a second plebiscite in Silesia + install a friendly government
>attack France through Belgium, take brits captive at Dunkirk
>force negotiations with little to no territorial concessions from France
>peace out with British, using POWs as a leverage
>send joos to Palestine
>prepare for war with USSR
>????
>enjoy a 1000years groBgermaniums

Well as the map shows other routes were available, but not ideal. I imagine the shipments would have just increased to those other ports, although a decrease in overall shipments probably still would've occurred, although not to a large enough degree to change the war.

Honestly Germany just didn't have much of a chance.

The enigma code was cracked, they didn't have enough soldiers or resources, in almost all scenarios they have to fight a two front war, and a million other elements almost guaranteed their demise from the outset.

If they had waited to attack Poland until the recommendation that was given by the Kriegsmarine (an additional 5 years at minimum to rebuild the navy). Then perhaps they had a chance, but even then the odds are slim.

There were other routes, but the artic one was already pretty stuffed to capacity, there were only 2 ports really viable, Murmansk, which had a small harbor and was pretty much always clogged, and Archangelsk, which was frozen half the year.

You have similar icing issues up by the artic routes (and, if Japan is openly fighting the Soviets, they might be raided as well, although these won't go quite as near their main strength), going through the Med is real tough before Italy goes down, which really only leads the Persian corridor. Again, I honestly don't know how much that could have been expanded, probably a fair bit, there's a lot of ports in the region, and the bottleneck is likely to be the railroads bringing things up from places like Basrah and Bandar Shapur.

For sure though, I doubt it would change the overall course of the war, but it might change things like the timetables of how far and how fast the Soviets get rolling, and who grabs what in Europe, and post-war rivalries between the Soviets and the Americans.

>If they had waited to attack Poland until the recommendation that was given by the Kriegsmarine (an additional 5 years at minimum to rebuild the navy). Then perhaps they had a chance, but even then the odds are slim.

To be honest, I think that's even worse, assuming that modernization and militarization efforts from Britain and France post-Munich keep up with the historical expansions. The two of them have a lot more industry and population to work with between them than Germany does, so the longer the wait, the stronger they get vis a vis Hitler. If the Germans are to have a chance, they need to move even sooner, perhaps as soon as 1938 post Anschluss with Austria and Czechosolvakia. And again, even then the odds are real bad.

What they really need is some way of allaying the fears of the rest of the world and capitalizing the early successes into stable political concessions instead of an all out industrial war to the death.

but this is Veeky Forums. stop bringing the /pol/ boogeyman into every. single. fucking. thread.

I mean how much do the French modernization in the time period it would take to build up the Kriegsmarine really help them out? They still would've had their focus be on the maginot line and the lost because they were out maneuvered. I feel like their modernization wouldn't have really changed that much.

The British are a bit more of a question, but if the French are defeated they are still stuck on their island regardless. And a re-built kriegsmarine could've made engaging the British navy more of a possibility.

Regardless, I think we can both agree that we are dealing with too many variables to make any realistic conjectures. All of these proposals are such a change in the entire war that this isn't a question of how the Germans could've won WW2 than it is reasons why they shouldn't have started it in the first place.

The only single event that could lead to a German victory is the creation of an atomic bomb.

All other scenarios have people inventing a completely different Germany with different objectives, ideology, and leaders.

Germany winning the war only exists as a neo-Nazi fantasy.

>The US defeated the nazis
sis....

>Don't invade Poland

And then collapse to debt when the MEFO bill deficit bursts all over the German treasury.

They built up for a war of conquest and they had their war of conquest. Unfortunately for them, it only ended in getting conquered.

The Finns were not willing to conduct more offensives though. They pushed a bit beyond prewar borders and then just dug in for two years.

Giving the French more time to modernize their military also gives them more time to understand the flaws in their strategy, and more time to shake out the dimwits who learned the wrong lessons from World War I. If some other conflicts show up on schedule (Spanish Civil War?) then the French could have figured out what the deal is with combined arms by 42-43, which is when Hitler would be launching his new offensive.

>If they had waited to attack Poland until the recommendation that was given by the Kriegsmarine (an additional 5 years at minimum to rebuild the navy). Then perhaps they had a chance, but even then the odds are slim.

Waiting five years so that the USSR could continue modernizing their economy and moving their factories eastward wasn't going to increase Germany's chances, if anything it makes the possibility of victory much slimmer.

And I'm not doing a >muh preemptive strike thing here, the Soviet Union had every reason to believe Germany was planning an eastern conquest, since Hitler had practically campaigned on that notion. The entire reason the answer to this type of thread always boils down to "no" is because the Nazis inherited a state that wasn't ready to face the Soviet Union and the gulf between the two only continued to broaden with each passing year. Equality between the two would require so much time and systemic change that we can barely even speculate on it.

Even if they don't, it gives them a chance to build or diplo their way out of some of their problems. A world in which Germany continually builds arms is probably going to make Belgium increasingly nervous, and the Belgians almost let the French in before the German assault as it is.

If they do, a war in which half the Frenech army is entrenched around the Maas and Dyle rivers by the time Germany makes its move is a very different one than what happened in real life.

Well, it would take quite a bit of foresight, but insisting to the Japanese that they not attack the United States, on refusal of declaring war on them as well.

Then, in preparation for the war against the USSR, try harder to get the UK to join their side or pledge neutrality, agreeing to some land concessions in the event of alliance.

As the USSR and the Ukraine was always Hitler's greater strategic goal he should have made a more concerted effort to focus on it. I think he would have if he had a better grasp of the Soviet production capacity but as it stands you live and die by wanton nationalism and confidence.

Anyway you try to give more advantages to Germany it always seems to even back out to the same result in the end.

Except Nuclear weapons. That's it. That's the only way they could've had a chance.

Time wants to happen, senpai.

Nuclear weapons, or dramatically altering the war's participants and their performances.

Like, if Britain had sued for peace and Italy's military had been as good as Mussolini boasted and Japan had applied more restraint in the Pacific and both Turkey and Iran had both joined the Axis, then yeah, things start looking up for Germany. Might as well throw in Stalin slipping on a patch of ice and cracking his head open while we're at it.

Learnt-create a hybrid deutcher English langauge post HRE. Would have been a good reflectional proof that they were less of a FUCKING CUNT. Also probably english-french,Italian under rus. Bow down niggers.

Und* FUCKING CHINESE PROSUXT REE