1. Could the Axis plausibly have won?/How?

1. Yes. If they somehow magically could have "Absolutely, miraculously and unrealistically captured Moscow in 1941 and managed to neutralize/destroy more than half of Red Army present in Battle of Moscow" or simply not go out with Operation Barbarossa in the first place...Everything after losing Battle of Moscow is pointless and unfeasible for Axis to win.
2. If they managed to neutralize Soviet Union on the Eastern Front before 1942, then Yes. If no, they would lose no matter what.

God im fucking tired of these wehraboo "what if" threads...
>"b-but w-what if m-muh b-beloved nazi aesthetics managed to win and create muh beloved GROßDEUTSCHLAND REICH???"
>"wouldn't it be b-better if we all just kneel before nazis and collectively sucked they Aryan cocks every day???"
>"w-world would be so much b-better if everything was painted in nazi aesthetics... i know this because i have a fetish on GERMANIA"

>Everything after losing Battle of Moscow is pointless and unfeasible for Axis to win.
70% of the Soviet military losses occurred after the Germans failed to capture Moscow.
It is absolutely possible for Russia to lose the war despite not losing the city in 1941. By 1943 they were running out of men even as things were in our timeline. With England having signed an armistice in 1940, the Germans can send a lot more materiel to the East and can afford to skip investing heavily in air defense systems, while also not suffering damage through air raids.
At the same time, the Russians would lack a lot of their most vital resources, if Lend-Lease didn't happen, or only happens in a much reduced capacity. The British likely would have signed some kind of non interference clause in their peace treaty with Germany (no Seelowe, just a regular negotiated peace, since both Britain and Germany recognize that neither has the ability to vanquish the other), and the USA is less interested in assisting the Soviet Union, which was a pariah at the time.

Summary:
Barbarossa starts earlier, the Germans have more men and more materiel. They produce more weapons and ammunition during the war.

The Soviet Union has less tanks and aircraft and substantially less ammunition. She has significantly less trucks, which makes offensives virtually impossible and makes it far more difficult to respond to German movements. The general lack of boots does not help (the British supplied 15 million pair).

All it needs is for the British to act rational in response to German diplomatic efforts for once.

>Barbarossa starts earlier
>Initial German advance gets bogged down in spring mud and gets nowhere
>Soviets leisurely regroup and roll into Berlin

I wish Wehraboos were actually in charge of the German war effort.

>Russia has mud 11 months of the year and minus 70°C for the other 15 months
This is what Americans believe.

>By 1943 they were running out of men even as things were in our timeline.
As opposed to who? Germany. Top kek.

>By 1943 they were running out of men
For your sake, i hope you meant germans not the soviets...

1. Unlikely, from the start of Operation Barbarossa impossible (maybe a peace treaty would have been possible in 1942 still).
2. There were serious talks with the USSR in 1940 about joining the Axis. Had Hitler not denied it and conceded some parts of the Balkans to the Soviet sphere of influence, the UK and China would have been fucked. An Axis invasion of Britain would still have been very hard, but with the combined resources of Japan, Germany, the USSR and the occupied territories (and no brutal Eastern Front, mainly) it would have been possible in the long run. The US would probably still defeat Japan, but it would be much harder due to the much increased support for Japan (especially with Soviet oil).

finish off the uk first before invading russia

alternatively attack russia first with the reason of defending poland and not having the uk or france be at war with you

1. ally with russia after invading france
2. be bffs and take over everything together
3. attack them after you win

>Could the Axis plausibly have won?/How?
The only point where the Germans had a shot were after the fall of France if Britain lost its will and asked for peace. Were it not for Churchill this would probable would have happened.

The Asiatic Horde was just too much for the German. Unless Germany manufactured an atom bomb then there was no chance they could have taken on wave after wave of the Red Army.

>Implying nuking Moscow will stop the asiatic hordes
You forget that they are nomadic hordes full of rage

jokes aside, atom bombs wouldn't end war in Europe, since the other side could retaliate with chemical and biological weapons

Yes, they should've used the age old trick of spamming INF+ARM+MEC armies for the combined arms bonus (add SPA as brigades as well). Also spam paratroopers to take over Britain easily and fuck up Russia, ez pz.

>Could the Axis plausibly have won?/How?
Yes, but it's an extreme extreme long shot. One of the following would have to have happened:
1) Assuming we start in 1933 (yes, I know the Axis didn't exist yet, but whatever) - Nazis take nukes seriously, either don't engage in retarded "Jewish physics" ideology or happen to be lucky enough to have a bunch more German physics geniuses around, devote resources to the matter starting basically in 1933, develop a nuke program all without alarming the US into pouring its much bigger resources into its own nuclear program, and beat the eventual Allies.
Chance of this succeeding even if the Nazis really wanted to do it - very very small.
2) Assuming we start in or after 1933 - the Nazis engage in a very different and more effective style of diplomacy that somehow detaches Poland from the possibility of Western protection or makes it a German ally, and doesn't alarm the UK, France, and the US. The Nazis then either attack the Soviet Union with a coalition of Eastern European supporters, or (probably better) somehow bait the Soviet Union into attacking first, at which point the Nazis can pose as defenders of Europe and perhaps even get UK/French support. This all would have required the Nazis to be a lot less murderous and to lie and bully diplomatically a lot less, but it may have succeeded.
Chances of success - small, but probably better than any other variant. However, this scenario doesn't end with the Axis dominating France, England, or the US. Just the eastern regions.

>tfw you remember Anglos unironically had capability of engulfing not just entire germany, but entire mainland europe in mustards gas, mercury, other chemical weapons... But they didn't because germans didn't do it.

Did the UK have Sarin like Germany did?

Cont.
3) Assuming we start in September 1939 once the war is under way - somehow get England and France to negotiate for peace. There's not much the Axis could have done to accomplish this. It would be entirely up to the English and French. So basically, it's not a strategy, but rather a what-if scenario. Conceivably, there's a scenario in which, say, all pro-war Allied politicians simultaneously have brain hemorrhages in just the right parts of the brain that would make them want to end the war.
Chances of this happening - vanishingly small, obviously. And not a strategy.
4) Ally with the USSR and use the alliance to dominate Central Europe. This would have required making concessions, though, the alliance would perhaps be unstable, and I don't know if this counts as victory for the Axis anyway.
Chances - uncertain.

So I guess it depends on what you mean by Axis victory. One way or another, I think that by 1941, the Nazis were fucked one way or another. If they managed to defeat and occupy the USSR, they'd probably just get nuked several years later and forced to accept pretty much any sort of terms the Allies would want to impose, or get turned into ash.
All chances of Axis victory after the war started rested not in anything the Axis could do differently, but in the Allies deciding, for whatever reason, to want to negotiate a peace. As they say in sports, once the war started the Axis did not control its own destiny. Its only hopes would have been in the Allies deciding they didn't want to keep fighting. There was basically nothing they could do to hurt the UK or the US, so as long as those two kept fighting and working on nuke programs, Axis defeat was just a matter of time.

>tfw there was possability of chemical warfare combinging with aerial warfare in 1940's technology.
The modern war trully is insane

Not sure, but they were planning on using anthrax on German cattle, poisoning the population and causing a food shortage simultaneously.

Nah mate it was a good try but the fucking Anglo couldn’t play ball. Churchill being bailed out by Jewish bankers didn’t help

We have this thread EVERY SINGLE DAY

>Russians
>nomadic
90% of Russians have never been outside of their oblast.

No.

The Nazis did not have the capability to defeat the Soviet Union. If all the Axis powers had concentrated on the elimination of the USSR, then yes they could, but uniting all the Axis against the Soviets rather than against the British, Soviets, and China all at once would have required a different set of objectives that aren't possible given the government of each Axis power. There is no foreseeable scenario in which Japan doesn't go into China and Britain doesn't continue the war after France falls such that everyone is arrayed against the Soviets alone.

Wrong. Americans have no idea what mud seasons are. And it seems you too.

>The Nazis did not have the capability to defeat the Soviet Union.
If they had captured moscow in august 1941(two months before hitler ordered the attack) the Red army would not have the capability to defeat the german army, due to lack of logistics.

Fpbp

>if they captured Moscow
a very clear sign of a ww2 brainlet
Moscow wasn't meant to be captured with a direct assault like Stalingrad
its supposed to be encircled in two pincers and turned into a cauldron like Kyiv or Smolensk
They've tried this at Leningrad at sieged it for 900 days and still the soviets held
what makes people think this hold would be feasible?
Also by the tail end of Barbarossa after Bryansk was taken but winter hasnt set in yet front line division strength was 1/5 of normal strength and only 750 tanks were functional

>They've tried this at Leningrad
No they didnt

In August moscow was protected by low energy troops armed with rifles, 750 tanks would roll over them.

if the war started earlier than the red army wouldve just mobilized earlier
rather than mysteriously follow the same schedule as the original barbarossa
or are you suggesting that there was a way that the heer couldve reach moscow eatlier which i liked to hear

if it was feasible for them to attack earlier they would have.

I notice that you don't know either, otherwise you would have said in your first post, or your second at the latest.

Since you didn't, I assume you are not interested in a discussion and only here to shitpost, which makes the content of your post doubly suspect.

Smolensk was captured in august 1941, Gadurien and Kluge were ready to attack moscow from that date, there were insufficient russian forces facing them and they would have most certainly taken moscow if they had attacked two months before the bad weather.

you're unfortunately naive if you think that 600k soviets in your southern flank being kept unchecked was not a threat

>muh uninformed memes
In 1942, the Soviet Union had a population of roughly 80-85 million. At that time, Nazi Germany had a population of roughly 90 million. The Soviet Union had suffered far higher losses than Germany up until then, most of them military aged males. The Soviets fueled the drive to Berlin by recruiting heavily from liberated territories.

The Red army was incapable of large scale offensives in 1941

Reported, saged and hidden

The question is whether they would have been able to take and keep Moscow effectively. The Germans had no way to supply the city with either military supplies or food, and the city was filled with paramilitary formations that would made occupation difficult to say the least.

It would have been if the British had signed a peace treaty after the German victory over France.

Moscow was surrounded by paved airfeilds which could still operate in winter,the germans may have only got short supplies, by the populace of moscow required 280 trainloads of supplies every day, I suggest they would surrender or flee within weeks.

>They've tried this at Leningrad at sieged it for 900 days and still the soviets held
Leningrad was continuously supplied with all kinds of stuff. The Germans didn't manage to keep the city encircled. If the Germans manage to actually cut off Moscow completely, they could starve the city out. Though whether that is worth the massive effort is another question entirely. In the end it probably would have been better to occupy Leningrad when that was possible, and be done with it.

not taking Kiev also means the German overextending their right wing and the Soviets keeping their industrial base in Ukraine
Soviete probably couldnt hope for a direct assault but whats going to stop the Northeastern front when army group centre is advancing to Moscow?

>I suggest they would surrender or flee within weeks.
The population cannot surrender, only the leaders of the city can, and it is unlikely that they would have. It meant certain death for them and their extended families, and all their friends, plus their extended family under Stalinism. The population would also neither be allowed to flee, nor would it be able to. People didn't own cars back then. What are they going to do, walk out into the frozen wastes with a hand full of food in their pocket? At least they would have shelter in the city.

As i said,how could they possibly encircle Moscow when they were so depleted
Typhoon itself was a miserable failure since even though some groups getting 28 miles from Moscow there was still 2 more defensive rings to go
and the Southern pincer was a failure from the get go

1.) Not invade USSR, not declare war on US

2.) No

>Typhoon itself was a miserable failure
Because of the mud and cold weather stopped it, attack in august and you have two months of good weather to achieve your goal, and at that time there was only one defensive barrier manned by poor quality troops facing them

Soviets had 450,000 partisans already infiltrated in the city. They would have lived off their own supplies while everyone else starved.

Meanwhile Soviet gov evacuated to Samara, 1,000km more east.

Taking Moscow would have meant nothing. Napoleon demonstrated this yet wehrboos still treat Moscow as a golden egg that would have magically brought total victory. Just ignore that the bulk of soviet administration and nearly all war production was far east of Moscow

>The Red army was incapable of large scale offensives in 1941

>Moscow was surrounded by paved airfeilds which could still operate in winter
Yes, but the Luftwaffe proved incapable of operating in the dead of winter in 1941. The Soviets actually had air superiority over Moscow in late 1941 because the Luftwaffe was grounded due to extreme cold and bad weather.

Oh great it's this autist again. You're retarded.

Winter froze the geman army and allowed that soviet victory, if the german army had been dug in at villages around moscow with shelter and warmth, that offensive may very well have failed.

yeah and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. You were wrong. The Soviets were perfectly capable of launching a large-scale offensive in 1941, even if the execution was pants on head retarded in many sectors (especially Kerch).

Army Group’s Centre’s war diary concluded on 22 August: ‘The armoured units are so battle-weary and worn out that there can be no question of a mass operative mission until they have been completely replenished and repaired.’
Logistical issues prevented them from doing this. Supply bases had to be brought up, (the move south towards Kiev helped with this since you didn't have to stretch your supply lines out more laterally), units had to be refitted, and stockpiles had to be built up if an offensive on Moscow were to be successful. All of that takes time, something you don't have if you launch an offensive on Moscow immediately in August.
>When priority was given to ammunition supply at the beginning of August, a drastic cut in the supply of fuel and rations was necessary. The armies which had been sent into action to liquidate the pocket at Smolensk were thus placed in a difficult situation. For some units, the distances were reduced by the advancing of the supply-bases— on the southern flank the Slutsk-Bobruysk- Mogilev axis, and on the northern flank, which was particularly difficult to
reach due to the road and transport situation, the bases at Polotsk, Nevel, and Vitebsk. However, no decisive overall relief was possible as long as supplies from the Reich continued to be sluggish. Vital ammunition trains ‘got lost’ in the Warsaw supply catchment area, with days elapsing before they were located and sent further. The ammunition stocks of Army Group Centre declined even further, instead of increasing to the extent which would have been necessary to prepare a new offensive. The resistance of the Soviet troops in the Smolensk pocket also delayed the rest period which had been planned for the mobile formations. The Soviet forces held out for a month, although Guderian had originally calculated that only three or four days would be lost.

OK they wernt competent at large scale offensives, they could do the zerg rush in piecemeal attacks, they were capable in 1943, and only became competent at it in 1944

And yet they were perfectly capable of achieving encirclements at Demyansk and Kholm at the end of 1941. With a million men at Army Group Center's overextended flank, even an offensive as horribly managed as the Kerch landings would have had a reasonably good chance of encircling any spearhead out of Army Group Center.

Wrong, the Soviet population was around 130 million in 1942. The Germans themselves did a report on manpower in early 1943 (1 March) and found that their remaining manpower reserves fit for military service was 0.5 million, compared to the Soviets' 3.4 million.

I think you will find the germans were alot better at mobile operations than the soviets until 1943 and an army encircled in moscow could shoot its way out with a spearhead of tanks. You are also ignoring the fact that the moscow rail hub would be removed, causing greater logistical difficulties for the red army and reducing its offensive capability more.

>an army encircled in moscow could shoot its way out with a spearhead of tanks.
Not with the logistical realities Army Group Center was faced with. Operation Typhoon as it happened already had armored units seriously depleted due to poor supply situations, and as pointed out, the situation was only worse the earlier they start the offensive. Demyansk and Kholm both showed that breakouts for encircled forces were nontrivial even if the Soviets hadn't yet figured out how to blockade them effectively.

>You are also ignoring the fact that the moscow rail hub would be removed
And you're handwaving away the actual battle for Moscow. No major Soviet city fell easily. Even Kiev and Sevastopol were serious roadblocks for the Germans. What makes you think that the Soviets aren't going to fight tooth and nail for every single square inch of Moscow?

>No major Soviet city fell easily
Only about 20 thats why on balance,moscow would probably fall as well, and attacking according to gudariens timeline(despite the apparent worn down state of his troops as reported on Veeky Forums c. 2017)

So we're just going to ignore reality now, I take it?

Wow excellent foresight
changing the schedule earlier doesnt mean that the heer would be in a better off position
Yes the soviets were at their most vulnerable after Smolensk but this assumes that resistance was non existsnt contrary to the fact
read some Glantz and you'll see why Guderian was wrong in this case

Your reality perhaps, why would Guderian ,Hoth,Kluge and Beck be pushing for an attack in August if their troops and equipment were worn out?

>despite the apparent worn down state of his troops as reported on Veeky Forums c. 2017
No, as reported in OKH/GenStdH/Org.Abt. (I) No. 702/41 g.Kdos., on tank supply east, 15 Sept. 1941, appendix id , BA-M A RH 2 2/v. 1326: At the beginning o f September 1941 the tank position - compared with the starting position - was as follows: total losses 30% on average, under repair 23%, ready for action 47%. Among the armored divisions of Army Group Centre, however, only 34% of tanks were ready for action.

Without operation barbarossa it would be possible, or if spain and portugal had join the axis or something.

because they were overconfident on their circumstances and was relishing on winning?

Well I'm not familiar with their claims (whether they made those statements during the war or after it), so I can't say for sure. But German commanders on the Eastern Front pretty consistently overestimated their abilities and ended up far too overextended, and only after Stalingrad did they finally realize how bad that could bite them in the ass.

If those statements were made postwar, then it's about as meaningful as all the other Hitler-blaming comments that everyone made. German generals loved to blame everything they could on Hitler (Manstein was a particularly bad example of this) to further their careers.

Also, "the general condition of the repaired tanks had been so weakened by previous rough treatment that they were often unable to withstand new demands. It was calculated that when new operations were launched, between 20 and 30 percent of the original and repaired tanks would break down again within 50 km."

>only 34% of tanks were ready for action.
So about 500 tanks and 200k troops vs 90k reservists guarding moscow.

this
Manstein himself thought he almost won Kursk and only lost because of Hitler pulling out due to Sicily when there was 2 million Soviets behind the salient
plenty of people thought Tunisia was going to be the peninsular campaign of the allied

Fuck off, what are they supposed to cross the channel successfully in, canal barges?

1.No
2.Even if 1 were possible 2 is absolutely beyond the capabilities of the axis powers.

And a million men to the South. And untold numbers of other men the Soviets were rapidly mobilizing.

>And a million men to the South.
Wise words bro, of course they would not know what was happening 50 km to the north would they?

>They had no radios

more like 250k of those who weren't going to be fighting in Bryansk and Rzhev since you assume the advance to be uncontested and the threat of 600k soviets of the northwestern front

Germany, Italy and Japan are not powerful enough together to be able to effectively win a war against the United Kingdom, United States and the Soviet Union.

There is no victory to be had there.

Assuming most of those tanks don't break down, equipment and men are kept well supplied somehow, and the Soviets don't bring up millions of reservists and conscript every women and child to build defenses like they did historically.

Manstein's personal accounts of a lot of his campaigns are pretty ridiculous. Accounts of the Crimea campaign I've read had him blaming literally everything that went wrong on Hitler. When he couldn't blame something on Hitler (like the failed second assault on Sevastopol), he leaves it out of his accounts, and he seemed to love to play up the importance of the retarded superguns he brought in for the siege by reporting things like the Schwerer Gustav destroying the ammo dump under the cliffs at Sevastopol (it didn't).

After reading about him, I've come to really not trust claims of Hitler supposedly making bad decisions. Really with much of the things he's blamed for, he's not necessarily making the wrong decision given the information he had at hand. Things like the Stalingrad airlift seemed reasonable to him - they did it at Demyansk a year before, Goering said they could do it, and the ground forces were clearly in no shape to launch an unplanned winter offensive, so it's not like there was any other option.

>hitler did nothing wrong

also his meme on clean wehrmacht

oh was it Manstein who started that meme?

Pretty much.

1. That would require an immense number of changes such that the Axis would be fundamentally different in most cases. In the 'our timeline' type debates, literally the only chance would be for the Soviet Union to completely collapse in the opening of Operation Barbarossa, likely from infighting fuckery that resulted in a loss of central command, which I doubt would happen so strongly in that situation. The Soviet Union is too goddamn big and has too many people.
The best the Nazi's could hope for was a conditional negotiated peace that gave them large slices of the pie.
Or for the diplomatic autism that led to the conflict with poland not happening and having a more secure anti-soviet alliance which could mean no war in the first place.
2. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Japan couldn't take fucking China by themselves, and Germany has jack shit in terms of Naval capability. How is Germany supposed to project power outside of continental europe? The chance of them successfully invading the United States is less than nil.

>I've come to really not trust claims of Hitler supposedly making bad decisions. Really with much of the things he's blamed for, he's not necessarily making the wrong decision given the information he had at hand
That is the thing also.
Hitler start managing armies because he start distrusting his generals. Considering how fragmented and how uncooperative his chain of command was sometimes its wonder how long they manage to fight.

>invade Britain
Wrong answer the Soviets would have steam rolled the Germans later

That's the weird thing that nobody considers about WW2. Hitler's paranoia about his generals was somewhat justified given the track record from WW1.

WW1 had shown that, on multiple occasions, German generals seemed more concerned with their personal honor than they did with intelligent strategic decisions. Most glaring of all was the very thing that ended the war - the Kiel Mutiny. The admirals of the High Seas Fleet were perfectly willing to throw away the entire fleet and the lives of tens of thousands of men, all while sabotaging ongoing armistice talks, because they were afraid the war was going to end without them getting their share of the glory.

So Hitler very much may have had that in mind through the war. Sure, his commanders may want victory, but when things don't go well, there's the very real possibility of someone pulling some retarded stunt that could compromise the entire nation for the glory of a handful of officers.

Though at the same time, there's the problem of Hitler surrounding himself with Yes-men, which definitely hurt the war effort. Later in the war, you can see Hitler starting to distrust many of those men (especially Goering).

thread really should have ended here

>you can see Hitler starting to distrust many of those men
No wonder as they often not deliver or not give truthful information.
I wonder if Hitler made Stalin style purge it would help or opposite?

Probably not. Hitler's problems with his advisors were a combination of shitty Prussian culture and his own failings in choosing Yes-Men over men willing to tell him what he actually needed to hear.

A purge really would have only undermined the authority of the Nazi Party and replaced the old guard of Yes Men with a fresh, inexperienced batch of the same.

To be honest not only Hitler paranoia was justified but also Stalin one too.
The more I learn about whole WW 2 situation the more reason I see for Stalin to distrust Brits or USA.

No, they were so utterly outclassed in terms of numbers, resources, equipment, and even technology that any braindead armchair general could win against them

Which is why it took 6 years and tens of millions of deaths for the three largest empires in the world to take them down?