What if the German counteroffensive went as planned and four Allied armies had been encircled and subsequently...

I cant see even that mattering that much in the scheme of things

A failed invasion is unlikely to annihilate british and US forces which would still present a threat requiring german forces to counter. The western allies invasion was primarily a diversion to draw off resistance to the soviet invasion and it would have continued to serve this role. Not to mention the UK/US air campaign would have continued just fine

Only result I can see is a far redder continental europe

>but what if the germans did x
no, i'm sorry
unless your question is "what if the germans didn't cause the war and instead stayed home, allowing a peaceful europe?" no matter what the nazis did, the end result would have been defeat at the hands of the USSR
the only thing these hypotheticals change is how much of europe stalin controls at the end

Frankly the never should have beaten even france. In any sane timeline the should have lost or stalemated there and that would have been the end of it

Don't forget that Anvil/Dragoon is still in the works, and historically was overwhelmingly successful, far more so than Overlord. So they'll still be getting into France.

>The western allies invasion was primarily a diversion to draw off resistance to the soviet invasion and it would have continued to serve this role.
That's not really true you know. By July of 1944, you had more manpower facing the Western Allies than the Soviets. usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/connor.pdf (Page 71 of the pdf)

Dragoon would be an asston harder without an active normandy front but you make a fair point

I'm confused, your source puts 3.1 million on the eastern front and 1.4 million on all other fronts

Hitler would have thrown the troops from the Bulge into the Eastern Front, where they would have been chewed up. The Allies might reinforce in France and control France while Germany falls into the Soviet bloc

>Dragoon would be an asston harder without an active normandy front but you make a fair point
Not particularly, since the Germans didn't have the strategic mobility (transport plan yay!) to shift southwards easily or quickly.

>I'm confused, your source puts 3.1 million on the eastern front and 1.4 million on all other fronts
Check out more than just the Heer forces. The Luftwaffe forces were huge and overwhelmingly arrayed against the Western Allies.

The source puts 1.8 million on other fronts and nothing on the eastern front, which cant possibly be correct. Not to mention a few pages down it puts 2700 operational aircraft on the eastern front and 2600 on all other fronts

Germany can't stop the Soviet offensive.

IT would have worked if the Hitler weather held. It equalized the fight by taking out allied air superiority. But it didn't hold.

Hitler's whole aim of the winter offensive was to freak out the allies into concluding a political peace in the west.

I think he would have had to held out for another year atleast before more people started to think like Patton was beginning to.

The evidence is there that the allies were atleast concerned about the reds controlling europe, with stuff like Operation Unthinkable existing.

According to Toland Stalin was willing to make a negotiated peace in Germany's favor until late 1943 because he didn't trust the democracies. He was apparently willing to concede most of Ukraine in exchange for economic aid and payment. Once Italy and the post Kursk offesnive proved to be huge successes he changed his mind.

Blunder of the fucking century by Hitler who was feeling extremely confident (if i don't destroy the USSR now i'll just have to fight them down the road).

WEW. I'm honestly surprised Ribbentrop didn't blow his own brains out when Hitler told him to cease all communications with the Russians after he told HItler about it.

>tfw you will never get the Germans to move literally 100% of their war effort to the east so the Allies can take as much of Europe before the Russians get to it

>Hitler's whole aim of the winter offensive was to freak out the allies into concluding a political peace in the west
For what possible reason would they ever do this? Even if every single western allied soldier was killed or captured they wouldnt make a peace

I think the reason the Battle of the Bulge seems like such a hopeless cause to us is that we're looking at it from a tactical or strategic position. It was hopeless and rather counterproductive if you look at it this way. However, I think a big reason Hitler pushed for it was political. Even if he wouldn't admit defeat he surely recognized it staring him in the face and there was no way he was going to survive that. So to hell with keeping any semblance of Germany alive. He wanted to drag things out as long as possible and hope for a miracle. And he had to keep all the other Germans from admitting that all was lost so he had to give them hope. He couldn't simply put all his forces into defense mode; that would be a blatant admission at this point that he himself recognized that his was a hopeless cause. He had to go on the offensive, no matter how bleak his prospects were. A victory, no matter how small or temporary, could go a long way in Nazi Germany and further strengthen his hold on the German people, to the bitter end.

Hitler had precious few resources by this time and it was clear he could launch only one major final counter-offensive even though he had two fronts to fight, fronts that were coming closer and closer. The decision to choose the Western Front is also a no-brainer. The front was much shorter on the western side so the few divisions Hitler could commit to his gamble would pack a bigger punch. In addition, the transportation issues (better roads, for example) would allow him more maneuverability. In addition, he had a strategic objective, Antwerp on the coast. On the Eastern Front what is going to signal a victory? Even Hitler could see that at best he couldn't hope to advance more than a hundred or so kilometers and there were no strategic natural objectives that he could stop at that would in any way be defensible.

And then there's the issue of how the German populace would respond to the invading forces. Hitler knew that the Germans would fight to the death before surrendering to the Russians (the Russians by this point were clearly going to rape and murder their way across Germany). However, by this point he already knew how Germans in the western Rhineland were hanging out the white flags when the Allies advanced. So it didn't make sense to put all his eggs into the Eastern Front basket while the Allies sweep in all but unopposed on the west. To Hitler it didn't matter who ultimately conquered Germany; he was still a dead man. But to the German populace who didn't plan on dying it was quite obvious who they would prefer to be their conqueror.

Anyway, just my two cents on the issue.

>For what possible reason would they ever do this? Even if every single western allied soldier was killed or captured they wouldnt make a peace
We're talking about Hitler here. He expected Roosevelt dying to be another Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.

>According to Toland Stalin was willing to make a negotiated peace in Germany's favor until late 1943 because he didn't trust the democracies. He was apparently willing to concede most of Ukraine in exchange for economic aid and payment.
Well, that was pretty stupid on both of them. By the end of the winter of '42 the Germans were hopelessly stuck and began to give ground.

...

Germany had no chance of anything other than unconditional surrender after Bagration.

>According to Toland Stalin was willing to make a negotiated peace in Germany's favor until late 1943 because he didn't trust the democracies. He was apparently willing to concede most of Ukraine in exchange for economic aid and payment. Once Italy and the post Kursk offesnive proved to be huge successes he changed his mind.
Do you have any source for that?