Why did Hitler STILL think he needed more land after getting this far...

>I think they could have produced a lot more aircraft if they had no trouble in the east, but I'm by no means an expert.
Military production is hardly that fungible. You don't just push a button and go "Stop producing tanks now, make more planes", you have to set up factories, train a workforce, ensure a constant supply of raw materials to be directed to a site, defend it from raids from your enemies, make sure that it gets electricity, etc. It takes a while, and redirecting effort from one field to another can take months.

>Why couldn't they? The Allies could. With more aircraft they could have interrupted RN shipping in the Mediterranean significantly (like they did in the Aegean and Crete) - couldn't they have supplied their forces by sea?
First off, the Allies mostly supplied their forces in North Africa by shipping around the Med into Suez (For the British forces) and to Morocco for the Torch landings. They were not making supply shipments through the Med itself except in very rare instances, like those resupply convoys to Malta. Interrupting Allied supply efforts essentially involves winning the theater, at which point it's moot. Then they would use the local rail nets to move supplies to the respective fronts. And while they weren't as bad as what the Axis faced, they did face significant limitations on the number of troops they could field in North Africa.

The Axis couldn't really do any of those things. The ports were not large enough to unload enough supplies to sustain several divisions on a constant offensive posture. Even if they were, the almost complete lack of rail infrastructure means that even if you can stockpile the goods, they'll just sit on the wharves since you're going to have an enormous difficulty getting them to the front.1/2

More air power might help stop interdiction of SLoCs out of places like Malta, but remember your operational range constraints, planes can't fly *that* far, especially WW2 early war ones. That can help you protect a route from Sicily to Tripoli, but as you extent east, and have more open water, even if you stacked planes ten feet high in your airbases, they just can't reach. You could divert Luftflottes to North Africa proper, but of course then they start consuming supplies against your precious tonnage unloading ceiling.

The main reason North Africa was important was precisely because large formations couldn't effectively deploy there. Trying to make it the main avenue of attack is simply impossible.

Suggested reading. dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a348413.pdf

dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a220715.pdf

>It takes a while, and redirecting effort from one field to another can take months.
Would be more than enough time from 1940 to the time the Americans had nukes, as far as that goes. Until early 1944 the Luftwaffe managed to inflict heavy losses on bombers, afaik, and that's with the eastern front.

Thanks for the elaboration and suggestion.
Wouldn't it theoretically have been possible to set up significant forces in western (Vichy-French) NA, though, through existing (?) French infrastructure before the start of the NA campaign?

>Would be more than enough time from 1940 to the time the Americans had nukes, as far as that goes. Until early 1944 the Luftwaffe managed to inflict heavy losses on bombers, afaik, and that's with the eastern front.
And they were suffering much worse losses (proportionally) than they were dishing out, especially against combined economies about 6 times the size of Germany's. They are not winning the air war, even without the "distraction" of the Eastern Front.

>Wouldn't it theoretically have been possible to set up significant forces in western (Vichy-French) NA, though, through existing (?) French infrastructure before the start of the NA campaign?
On a purely military and logistical level, sure. In fact, the largest German deployments to North Africa were the forces defending Tunisia in 1943, precisely because of those reasons. However, Vichy France worked for Germany as they did precisely out of a promise that Germany would respect the French colonial empire and restore France once the war was over; and the deployment of Italian and German troops to French North Africa was simultaneous with the attempted seizure of the French fleet at Toulon, and the essential dissolution of the Vichy government. You're probably going to have to do that earlier if you want to deploy troops there.

Even if you do, however, it's not clear how this would help you get the British out of Egypt. The French railroads don't extend into Libya, let alone further. You've got a bunch of new ports, but they're all even farther away from your enemies. It would help guard against a Torch landing, but that's about it.

But nassis lost and ussr lived

>They are not winning the air war, even without the "distraction" of the Eastern Front.
I didn't think they'd be able to win it, but do you think they'd be able to maintain a stalemate in the air over France?

>It would help guard against a Torch landing, but that's about it.
But if you've prevented Torch, hold French NA, and don't have to fight on the eastern front, how will the UK and the US win? Do you think something like Overlord would be possible?

Ctrl+f for the wages of destruction

I'm disappointed in you Veeky Forums. The nazi economy was fundamentally a Capital parasite because it's structure tended towards extreme overheating failure modes.

The needed to invade other places of get the capital to keep up the show.

I read on this board that towards the end of the war the Nazis actually achieved a state of relative stability thanks to a giant amount of slave labor, can anyone say something on this?

What this user said Hitler wanted autarky in food production, and the nazi economy was running at a massive capital deficit that repeatedly forced Hitler's hand (1938,39,41).

Adam tooze explains this all in his book, but the only conquest that would've been more than a quick infusion of capital would've been the ussr.

>I didn't think they'd be able to win it, but do you think they'd be able to maintain a stalemate in the air over France?
No. I think they would produce an extra 12-20% more single engine fighters, and be promptly smothered anyway, especially since without the Eastern Front, an invasion into France is far less likely, and the Americans especially are [probably going to invest more into aerial factories and less into factories for various land based stuff.

>But if you've prevented Torch, hold French NA, and don't have to fight on the eastern front, how will the UK and the US win? Do you think something like Overlord would be possible?
Well, for starters, preventing Torch doesn't prevent attacks from the other direction; the British are still capable of projecting much more force than you are able to in North Africa, and once they get their heads out of their asses and fix up their tactical doctrine, they can probably evict you from Libya and then go west to Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco.

A Husky *might* be doable, but I'd need to look into it more; again, both sides fitted up to their maximum ability to deploy in Italy pretty quickly, but the larger amount of air assets beforehand might make getting an invasion covered by air difficult.
1/2

An Overlord, as we know it, is out of the question, at least within the time frame available. The Germans have a LOT of troops that they can redirect to France, probably on the order of 3-4 million. Unlike Italy or North Africa, you have lots of room and a fairly good local infrastructure. The only way an Overlord invasion would be possible would be to have a Transport Plan even bigger than the historical one to paralyze troop deployments, and even then, it's probably going to take years to subdue Germany in this fashion.

More likely is an intensification of the air war and an attempt to bring down Germany through bombing alone. You can do that without ever leaving England; and an actual implementation of the somewhat halfheartedly planned re-invasion of Norway is also likely. And it will probably go nuclear once that technology is available.

Wages of Destruction posits that the main crumbling point that necessitates invasion is the lack of foreign reserves, not the parasitism. Parasitic relationships of places like Poland and Yugoslavia were sufficient to keep most of the German war economy trundling along as well as it did (which admittedly wasn't great)

Nope. Slave labor dies quickly, makes low quality projects or sabotaged them, and largely was just a necessary gauze pad on the bleeding wound that is the nazi economy. Their armor divisions were almost always understrength, they couldn't match even Britain alone in air production, and they suffered crippling oil shortages.

The peak capability of the nazi military (1941 or early 1942) is also when it was flush on looted capital, looted weapons, and had years of no major land front to prepare. That's why the losses in early Barbarossa crippled them down the road.

Polish and yugo banks were good sources of forex, but they didn't provide the food and oil the Nazis needed.

Tooze's main thesis is that every nazi invasion can be traced back to the hypothetical incoming economic crisis it was intended to resolve (especially in 41)

>the lack of foreign reserves
Would all of western, central, southeastern Europe, possibly parts of NA and a trade relationship with the USSR really not suffice for Germany's needs?
>crippling oil shortages
but those wouldn't be a thing with Romania secure and the USSR as trading partner, would they?
>looted capital, looted weapons
But those were from countries they occupied, with factories and workforces, too.

It's really hard for me to believe that with most of Europe firmly held by the Germans and without the eastern front they couldn't do better than in OTL.

And the invasion of the USSR did not yield actual oil influx, and dramatically increased oil expenditure; the Nazi oil economy trudged along until the loss of Ploesti.

Food is a bit more difficult without the annexation of the Ukraine, but it's not like there weren't actual fertile areas under their domain and given their use of slave agricultural labor to begin with, they could have at least tried to increase food production there.

As it was, most of the increased food gains from places like Belarus and the Ukraine went to sustaining the troops that were fighting in those areas, which do not need to be mobilized and can work in agricultural areas. (remember, labor is the primary shortage in the Nazi war economy according to Tooze)

The Soviet Union had a greater manpower, greater GDP and more natural resources than Germany.

This means in the long run the Soviets would outproduce the German war industry, and become unassailable.

The more Germany waited for war, the more impossible it was to win it, and the greater the likelyhood of a Soviet invasion instead.

So it was "pre-emptive" but not in the way the Stormfags claim. It was the result of a cold economic calculation.

Well, the USSR is not exactly a stable trading partner. That relationship was fraught from the beginning, and Germany was in arrears of their own obligations at the time of the invasion.

>Would all of western, central, southeastern Europe, possibly parts of NA ... really not suffice for Germany's needs?
No, it would not, unless they can keep a stable trade relationship with the Soviets, but that part is somewhat difficult for them. They are still lacking certain critical resources, most especially oil in the quantities that they need it.

>It's really hard for me to believe that with most of Europe firmly held by the Germans and without the eastern front they couldn't do better than in OTL.
They could definitely do better than they did historically. They just wouldn't do well enough to win.

Best case scenario, Speer pulls a temporary miracle out of his ass, Germans watch their cities get bombed to rubble and then get nuked in 45.

Worst case scenario, the war marching grinds to a halt as the Romanians run out of their pre-war reserve stocks in 42 or 43, and their extraction rate is insufficient to maintain the war economy. Also the slave labor reserve (Poland and Jews assuming they aren't being holocausted) dies even faster.

Also, Stalin is a dick. He would have no reason not to press further territorial and other concessions on a losing nazi Germany in order to maintain the status quo.

You are correct in what happened, my arguement is merely that the nazis thought that the invasion would solve all the aforementioned problems, which is the reason they embarked on it.

>You are correct in what happened, my arguement is merely that the nazis thought that the invasion would solve all the aforementioned problems, which is the reason they embarked on it.
Ahh, my mistake. But yes. Again, their main goal was economic autarky. Annexation of the Ukraine and what's now Azerbaijan would probably keep them in a fully autonomic economic sphere.

Hell, even just the threat that he might invade, even if he never does, is going to keep the Germans with a significant deployment of forces in Poland and East Germany.

Ironically the genocide probably would've voided this, as there weren't enough Germans to replace the Ukrainians/whoever with to maintain production levels for autarky.

Another question, I know the rational answer is noone knows, but what do you think?

Would Stalin have invaded in such a scenario?

Probably would've invaded after the nukes dropped to grab some choice territories, or before if there was an obvious collapse in progress.

At least the holocaust doesn't hit Belorussia or Ukraine in this timeline. Poles might get hit harder.

Probably not. You look at the degree of political maneuvering before Stalin invaded tiny almost helpless countries like the Baltic States or Poland, and the rude shock he got in Finland. Isolate a minor power, make alliances with the nearest major power, invade at overwhelming odds. Ultimately, he was a cautious sort. Attacking another major power like Germany, even if he thought victory was more likely than not, isn't in his style; he's not about to risk his country on anything but a slam dunk.

Look at japan though. If the fuhrerbunker was getting nuked in 1945, and the German state was collapsing, he'd probably swoop in to seize western Poland and kaliningrad

Ok, yes, if things have deteriorated that far, he definitely would. I was more thinking of an invasion when the issue was more in doubt, a kicking of this alternate history back into something more resembling the historical timeline.

As you said, Stalin was too cautious for that. I can see him try to nibble more of the scandies/Eastern Europe through intimidation and trade leverage though.

pre-Green Revolution agriculture was shit and yields were low

First of all Germany was never going to keep France and the Low Countries. That would not have been politically feasible. That meant Germany would be only marginally larger and nowhere near the size it needs to be in order to compete with the US on equal terms.

Especially when it becomes even more unmechanized, the resources it needs are diverted to other industries, and workers are drafted into the military

greed is insatiable

Ironically the Ukraine has one of the most fertile soils in the world. This would be an instance where the German obsession with >muh lebenraum and >muh Drang nach Osten would have been justified as the lands of the Ukraine could have turned Germany into one of the world's largest agricultural producers rather than an importer.

Before the October Revolution and the cancer of Communism, Tsarist Russia was the #1 exporter of wheat in the world. In fact the fall of Tsarist Russia would lead to the rise of the "Big Four" agricultural exporters (Canada, Argentina. USA, Australia) that would dominate world agricultural exports until today, but particularly during the 1910s-1950s period.

With the lands of the Ukraine, Germany would have been self-sufficient in food production and immune to the British blockade and Allied embargoes that caused so much problems in WW1.

>Nazi ideology calls for Stang Nach Osten
>what if Hitler wasn't Hitler could Germany have won then?

Stormfag out

Yeah, I forgot about that.

Well you see user there's this country near the top on that map. It's called the UK. It was actually at war with Germany and there was no way for Germany to invade it under any realistic scenario and its leader made it very clear that he would never sign any kind of peace deal outside of unconditional surrender.