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I get these Quora emails and looks like people there, and elsewhere, just can't ask enough of like "What would have been the simplest way for Hitler/Germany to win WWII?" Is there some underlying wistfulness that surfaces as questions like this, that they should have won?
No not really I just think it's fun to consider alternate realities sorta like devils advocate. I think most people can disassociate the war strategies of the nazis and confeds from their policies.
I also don't think in absolutes. If you were born in Georgia in the 1840s and were a poor laborer you likely faught for Dixie regardless of you social beliefs or participation in slavery. Same for Germany there were likely many people who fought for their country but didn't believe in nazi policies.
In both cases, a lot of people didn't have much choice, difference being that it was much harder to desert the Wehrmacht (at least for a German) than the Confederate military. One book puts the number of Confederate AWOL at seven figures, and the homefront stories of constant deserter patrol seem to bear out that CSA leaders considered desertion a significant problem. One of the great myths of U.S. history is this unified South all joining hands in a cause. The evidence indicates in fact that there was enormous division--and not all of that division manifested in passive ways.
I get these Quora emails and looks like people there, and elsewhere, just can't ask enough of like "What would have been the simplest way for Hitler/Germany to win WWII?" Is there some underlying wistfulness that surfaces as questions like this, that they should have won?
Why is there a TV show called "The Man in the High Castle"?
I get these Quora emails and looks like people there, and elsewhere, just can't ask enough of like "What would have been the simplest way for Hitler/Germany to win WWII?" Is there some underlying wistfulness that surfaces as questions like this, that they should have won?
Well, the Third Reich did kick every butt presented in the late 30's and early 40's.
Just in general "alternative history" can be useful as a way to build up your understanding not only of what actually happened, but WHY it happened that way. At least IMHO. So long as your "what if" games don't include anachronistic super weapons supplied to the losing side, or other things that can't reasonably be said to be possible alternative outcomes. What if there had been a bad storm on D-Day? What if the Germans didn't "take the bait" and met the assault head on where it was? That sort of stuff.
I do sometimes wonder if they had called the game off just before invading Poland - how would that have played out?
At the end of the day, I don't see how either Germany or Japan could have conquered the US, regardless of what they did or didn't do. The Man in the High Castle is just straight fantasy in my book, I just don't see how even if the US had taken a strictly pacifist role, and let say Germany have all of Western Europe, Japan maybe even all of China - If England didn't exist, I don't see how D-Day could have been pulled off. And there is no England analog on either coast of the US. So even if the Axis "won" what they could win, they would have been unable to mount a sea-lift invasion of the US. And if they tried, US neutrality would be toast.
I guess, remotely, if Germany conquered all of Western Europe say by '42 or 43, stayed out of Russia, and then just percolated along until the 60's, if they got to work seriously on atomic weapons, and kept going with rocketry - and somehow the US *and* USSR remained fat, dumb, and completely un-involved (not sure how that could have happened) - perhaps world conquest or at least hegemony could have been achieved.
That said, Hitler would have probably died of natural causes by then, not sure he had an "heir" picked out, the man was uniquely evil, and when he bit the dust, probably Germany would have not remained so belligerent.
But getting back to the original question, the Axis powers certainly seemed to be winning in the early part of the war, so one tends to speculate "what if their winning streak had held out till the end" even though if you think it through, there was not enough "meat" there on the Axis frame to actually go much further than they actually did.
No not really I just think it's fun to consider alternate realities sorta like devils advocate. I think most people can disassociate the war strategies of the nazis and confeds from their policies.
I also don't think in absolutes. If you were born in Georgia in the 1840s and were a poor laborer you likely fought for Dixie regardless of you social beliefs or participation in slavery. Same for Germany there were likely many people who fought for their country but didn't believe in nazi policies.
This is very true. A poor laborer in Georgia wasn't going to gain anything, but it was his society, and its been shown many times that what we identify with is more powerful than logical arguments. So that laborer would have done his duty to his society. When things got desperate at home, the Confederacy was faced with mass desertion, and imposed drastic penalties to slow it, but it did not fully work despite the cost. With the Nazi establishment, there was domestic resistance among Germans, but it was small and very costly. One tactic used was threatening young men whose families were seen as less than loyal with their deportation if the young man did not fight. And others knew refusal would only bring retribution against more than themselves. And some were true believers. And others simply didn't see any alternative.
The interesting thing about alternative history is to construct a believable one, you must look at the reality with a microscope. There are elements which are a given, but many others which will stay what if's because there are multiple possibilities which could lead to much different outcomes. That is what is really fun.
If you are part of a fandom for something with lots of material to play with, like Star Trek, you could be inspired to ask what if too, and be a part of a whole alternate universe of stories where it didn't follow the script. These can be just as technical and sweeping as alternates to a real (in this plain) history. I think its a human fascination to take things and ideas and narratives apart and see what happens if you put them back together differently.
It can be argued that, while Germany was capable of defeating France, the Lowlands, Norway, and Eastern Europe, it lacked sufficient population and resources to defeat Britain, Russia, or the United States. A better question is how they could have avoided losing the war - by not having fought it in the first place.
It can be argued that, while Germany was capable of defeating France, the Lowlands, Norway, and Eastern Europe, it lacked sufficient population and resources to defeat Britain, Russia, or the United States. A better question is how they could have avoided losing the war - by not having fought it in the first place.
They should have stopped at reclaiming all the territory that was stripped from them after WW1 and quit paying restitution.
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