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The real question is how long could the military ensure an insurgency and how much money could their lobby could reap in the meantime? If Afghanistan and Iraq are a guide, then I'd day the answer is decades and trillions.
Would there be an insurgency? All parties involved would have intimate knowledge of The Great War and after being shocked and awed by weaponry H.G. Wells or Divinci could not imagine another honorable surrender would leave a German nation still a member of the world's community.
The most efficient way of taking down Nazi Germany at its height in 1941 assuming one has the US Forces of 2015. Is very simple. Issue a demarche ordering Germany to withdraw to its 1936 borders and surrender its Kreigsmarine, Luftwaffe and all but 5 divisions of the Heer plus the Waffen SS.to US Forces or any US Ally and to do this in 21 days. The demarche would state if this order is ignored or rejected a rain of destruction never seen on this Earth would erase Germany from the world of man. On the 22 nd day at sunrise local Central European time. a Trident submarine would launch 1 SLBM with 3 warheads one configured to explode 100 miles above the city of Nuremburg the resulting EMP would destroy every power plant, the phone and telegraph system any radars, radio station every radio, the control, switching and signal system for the rail system in Germany Austria, and Bohemia. The second warhead impact would be on a mountain top towering above the quaint town of Rudesheim on the Rhine River (The target would be the Iron Maiden a statue raised by Bismarck and the Kaiser to celebrate the defeat of France and the Unification of Germany in 1871. This guardian of the Rhine and Germany is about as tall as the Statue of Liberty and from it one can see into what was taken from France at that date. The blast would do some damage in Mainz, Weisbaden and Frankfort plus as far north as Koblenz and the flash would be seen n Paris, Brussels, Koln, the Ruhr and Hanover as well as the thunderous rumble. The final bomb would impact at Potsdam erasing the Palace of the Kaiser and the blast and thermal effects would set the Western suburbs of Berlin a fire, destroy every plane at Templehoff airport, and break every window in Berlin including those in the Reichs chancellory and probably knock the statue off the Brandenberg Gate.
I would give the Germans a few hours for the dust and the chaos to settle down before sending a shortwave message to any German outpost able to receive it promising there is plenty more of this type of weapon and repeating we are quite willing to set Germany a blaze like Valhalla in the closing movement of Gotterdammerung unless our demands now raised to unconditional surrender and occupation by US and Allied forces arent met by 1200 hours Berlin time the next day. The Germans unlike the Japanese would understand the hopelessness of fighting Superman and would sign the surrender documents in all the places indicated. Also men working for the SS like Herr Dr Professor Werner Heissenberg and Werhner von Braun would be able to tell the Fuhrer that the American wonder weapon is decades more advanced than they were trying to build for Herr Himmler!
Last edited by mwruckman; 09-02-2015 at 11:11 PM..
Modern weapons (i.e. LGB's JDAM's etc.) are precise munitions better suited to hitting their target than using massed fire. Even in WW2 airbases were dispersed to avoid mass destruction of aircraft. WW2 aircraft were more than capable of short take offs and unprepared runways than modern aircraft, if you bomb the runway you get the ground crew to take a mower to the section of grass next to the paved runway, and in an hour of so you're back to operational status. Even after heavy bombing (an initial wave of 90 Ju88 dropping full sticks of bombs [3,100lbs per plane] for 27,900lbs of bombs in the initial attack followed by continuous bombing from multiple waves for six hours) Biggen Hill for instance was back in operational status the following morning, there is no reason to suspect that German airbases were less able to retain operational status.
SEAD today strongly relies on radar emissions, almost all air-defenses rely on radar to acquire and target HARM missiles for instance would be useless against 1940's air defenses since except in few instances did not use RADAR. So would most aircraft installed EW systems that rely on passive radar detection to alert pilots of possible incoming fire. So Apache's and similar would have no warning of ground fire directed at them, and the tools used in 1940 are not dissimilar to those used today, how would said Apache handle an 8.8cm HE shell impact? I can tell you, it wouldn't be pretty.
Communication facilities were also dispersed, you'd have to find them and bomb them, they may not even have emissions (using hardlines not radio), how do you spot a communication base when it looks like any other building and has no EM emissions?
You'd want to fly in something low and slow (a Blackhawk) over the 1940's Berlin Air Defenses? Rather you than me.
When you say SEAL team do you mean the 300 personnel team, or a platoon of 20 (including the command element)? If you mean Team that's 600 men deployed in 55 Blackhawks I think that kind of defeats the purpose of using Spec-ops. Even using two platoons (40 people) using fast-rope isn't really stealthy, since in the 1940's people would be looking for the strange "whop-whop-whop" noise they're hearing.
Problem is you're assuming that the enemy would be like a modern enemy that has had it's technology stripped, that would not be the way it would work. They never had the tech to get used to, so not having it isn't a detriment. The more technically advanced would have an advantage, but there would be no equivalent penalty on the lower tech side.
In my opinion were this possible that the higher tech side would be stunned, they would go in thinking they have all the advantage and inflict heavy losses but also receive heavier losses than expected (thus being stunned), this is typical of most engagements we (the US) have seen from Vietnam onwards. In the 1940's people accepted that wars cost lives, the bigger the war the heavier the cost. Look at Iraq, it started in 2003, and cost around 4,500 US lives, the Battle of Moscow cost Germany a high of 400,000 men in 3 months (97 days), or around an average of the same casualties the US suffered over the entirety of Iraq for every single day for 97 days. Do you think that the US has the political will to experience those levels of casualties today and not break, Germany did in 1941? I'd think that with today's political will even 1/10th or less over an extended period of a week or more would result in some form of reflection.
I think your overall presumption of an easy victory in such a scenario is greatly overrated. As Jaggy correctly states too, there's a big difference between "winning the war" and securing peace. Even if Berlin fell within a few weeks of an offensive, the war is not won. You may have secured a strategic objective, but that's not winning the war.
My scenario assumes that higher command has the sense to play to their strengths. Put E-2 and E-3 radar reconnaissance aircraft up to track their airforce, and shoot them down whenever they're airborne. Their fighters would have zero chance of scoring a kill on an F-16 or F-18, and I seriously doubt their flak would be effective on supersonic aircraft. They might get lucky and tag a few just by sheer chance, but their fire control would not be able to track fast enough or adjust to such a completely different generation of aircraft.
A-10s would make mincemeat of their armored formations, and yes, some of them might get lucky with a 20-mm or a random MG-43 every now and then, but for the most part their ground forces wouldn't have much to defend themselves against modern jets. For that matter, even the F-16s, F-18s, and F-15s would shred the top and rear armor on any German armored vehicle of that era, although the low ammo loads would mean that they'd only be able to bag a few tanks on each mission, but they've got time. Cluster bombs that were designed to savage massed formations of T-72s and T-80s would make Panzers and Tigers look like they were made of tinfoil.
Our air force and navy would easily destroy their air force and armored units with very few losses. Their surface fleet would last only days, and their U-boat fleet would be useless against 21st Century ASW technology. Besides, with the destruction of the surface fleet and the U-boat bases, they'd only be able to stay at sea a few weeks. At that point, the objective specified in the OP - defeat of the German armed forces - would be accomplished.
But, then comes the hard part - the liberation of Europe, which means occupying it with ground forces. I don't see any way to do that without several infantry divisions, perhaps an entire army. The OP doesn't ask about how to deal with a potential insurgency after the war is over, so I won't bother speculating. But I think that part would be a hell of a lot harder than simply defeating their army and air force.
Indeed. With the political restraints placed on it today, the U.S. Army would have a lot more trouble dealing with Werewolf than it did in actuality.
The reason why the US has fought subsequent wars with one hand tied behind it's back is because they didn't have the overwhelming support of the public. A large segment of the public has viewed Vietnam, and the wars in the Middle East as "ill considered adventures", not worth the loss of American lives. WW2 was a different animal, and the war effort had the overwhelming support of the American public. This is why so many lives could be lost without a loss of support for the war effort.
Yes, all this is based on great success in Vietnam. Sure. Or Afghanistan.
Vietnam was a proxy war and Vietnam was being backed by USSR and China. The US was winning the actual war and the Tet Offensive was a failure. The problem was that the press and popular opinion turned against the war and we eventually withdrew. But that is not where it ended because it was part of our defeat of the Soviets in the cold war.
Afghanistan will take years to figure out but Al Quida is not much of a threat.
Iraq was handled wrong and the US made one critical mistake when it dismantled the Iraqi Army instead of keeping it in place and then getting rid of leaders who did not get on board with a democratic Iraq.
I have no fear of Isis and it seems like it is a little gift for France and Germany who I blame for the Iraq war by not standing with the US on sanctions and other peaceful endeavors to get Saddam to comply because they just wanted to stand against the US.
So we'd be fighting WW2 Germany ala "Final Countdown" ?
I would think attacking Germany's ability to produce food, electricity and water would be one of the first targets. A famished, thirsty workforce is not an effective one. Then jam their comms 24/7. Take out their industrial capability across the board. Destroy their ports, roadways, bridges, healthcare facilities and dams. Hit their population centers hard and continually. Take out their capitol city with a few high-yield nukes. The nukes alone would be a wunderwaffe of inconceivable proportions. Show them what Götterdämmerung is really like, only without hope of renewal.
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