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Who cares what if? We'll never know what if. You can't change history. And if by some reason they didn't invade Russia, they would have invaded other places. Things could have been worse or better.....not that there really is such a thing as "better" during a war.
You can't change history, but there is more than one way to study it.
Making up what if scenarios isn't studying anything.
It depends on the scenario. Here's an example:
WHAT IF ADMIRAL NAGUMO HAD ORDERED A THIRD STRIKE AT PEARL HARBOR? Now, this is conceivable. All he had to do was order it. There was nothing preventing him from doing so. However, a look at this possibility leads us to the ramifications of such an order. For one, Japanese carrier pilots had not trained for night landings. If you haven't trained in night landings, a good way to lose a lot of aircraft and aviators is to order your naval airmen to do it for the first time under combat conditions in foreign waters. Another problem was that if the task force didn't immediately head back to Japan, they were in danger of not having enough fuel to reach resupply ships, which would have meant abandoning or scuttling part of the task force on the high seas. In light of this and other potential outcomes of a third strike, by examining that what-if we see why Nagumo's decision was a reasonable one. That is the study of history.
By examining other scenarios and their potential outcomes, we can identify actions that were taken that were a mistake. After all, the statement OPERATION MARKET-GARDEN WAS A MISTAKE is just another way of asking that WHAT IF THE ALLIES HADN'T LAUNCHED OPERATION MARKET-GARDEN? and concluding that the what-if - ie, no Market-Garden - would have suited the Allies better than doing what they did historically. To label a historical act as a mistake is to implicitly play the what-if game.
The problem comes when the what-ifs involve implausible to impossible scenarios:
WHAT IF THE JAPANESE HADN'T ATTACKED HAWAII OR THE PHILIPPINES?
WHAT IF GERMANY HAD INVADED THE UNITED STATES?
WHAT IF OSWALD MOSLEY HAD BECOME PM AND THE UK HAD JOINED THE AXIS?
These range from so different from history that one needs to explain how they came about in the first place, or are so utterly illogical or impossible that there is no conceivable way they might have happened.
So while I do not oppose what-ifs, I do expect them to be logical and conceivable under the historical circumstances. And if they require a significant divergence from history - ex: Germany gets a deployable atomic bomb in 1944 - then the changes in Germany policy and planning and capability which allow that to happen need to be spelled out, because those changes will have costs and we need to see if Germany could have plausibly done so, all things considered, before considering the possible outcomes of their having done so.
Simply put, we shouldn't have to invoke the Alien Space Bats when considering a what-if.
Quote:
"Alien space bats" ("ASBs") is a neologism for plot devices used in alternate history to mean an implausible point of divergence.
Quote:
The term "alien space bats" was first coined, then popularized in the usenet group soc.history.what-if. Alison Brooks (1959–2002) is credited as the creator of the term, using it to debunk the possibility of a successful Operation Sea Lion by saying the only way it could be successful was if alien space bats helped the Nazis.
According to latest's historical evidence if Hitler would not have attacked the Soviet Union then the Soviets would have attacked the Germans within a few weeks of Operation Barbarossa. One of Stalin's generals even said that. If that would have happened the Soviets might have been in western Europe in 1941 instead of 1945 and may have over run the entire western countries up to the English channel. The Germans would have had a real tough defensive fight on their hands and I think the victory could have gone either way.
The whole point of the war for Germany was to secure Lebensraum - 'living space' in the East. This objective was inextricably linked to Nazism.
The response to the above statement is that it isn't as simple as that. No doubt Germany needed(and still needs) living space for their cramped population but communism was(and is) an ideology that believes the whole world should adhere to and live under and stopping communism from taking over Europe gave Hitler the opportunity to go after his Lebensraum. They were both of the same kind of philosophy in a way except Hitler's National Socialism wasn't something for anyone who didn't want it. It was a German phenomenon and wasn't for export.
Nagumo knew his forces couldn't inflict much more damage than they already had done. The Japanese "Annapolis", Eta Jima, taught that "You do not attack fortresses with naval forces." Nagumo's Kido Butai was ordered to do just that. He was also ordered to bring the fleet back intact. The physical plant at Pearl could not have been significantly damaged by a third wave, nor could they have seriously damaged the fuel supplies stored in over 50 huge tanks.
According to latest's historical evidence if Hitler would not have attacked the Soviet Union then the Soviets would have attacked the Germans within a few weeks of Operation Barbarossa. One of Stalin's generals even said that. If that would have happened the Soviets might have been in western Europe in 1941 instead of 1945 and may have over run the entire western countries up to the English channel. The Germans would have had a real tough defensive fight on their hands and I think the victory could have gone either way.
"The latest isn't necessarily the best." Just sayin'.
Hitler could win and beat Soviet Union if he had better coordination with his ally in the East -- Japan.
If Nazi Germany and Japan launched a joint invasion simultaneously, there was no way Soviet Union could survive a two-front battle.
The worst problem Hitler had created was his choice of allies -- Italy and Japan. Both allies didn't help Hitler a bit. On the contrary, they brought Nazi Germany trouble and even disaster.
Hitler had spent many months in pondering whether Germany should be an ally of China or Japan.
History had many ironies. When the Japanese Imperial Army launched the Mukden Incident in 1931 and stepped up its invasion into China gradually, Germany was the principal supplier of military hardware to China against Japanese invasion. There was a huge team of German military advisers dispatched by Hitler to China that stationed on almost every major battlefront against Japan.
Only in 1936 did Soviet Union start to join the rank in helping China by sending pilots to man warplane (earlier than General Chennault's Flying Tigers). On the other hand, Japan had been buying high grade steel from U.S. to make warplanes to bomb China.
So if Germany stuck with China and continued to wage war indirectly with Japan, that would be an interesting scenario. At least Germany would not be dragged into war with U.S. on the aftermath of Pearl Harbor attack.
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