Reply With Quote
How could you forget the great Heinrich Himmler? I'd vote for that man to be president of the US; get rid of the immigration problem once and for all.
imagine you lived in the 1945 Germany, a natural German citizen with the right to vote. Germany reached peace with both commies and allies. Germany was allowed to keep its original territory (Germany & East Prussia) and be an independent sovereign, but the condition was that Hitler should step down and democracy be restored in Germany (like how things used to be before Hitler assumed power). You were about to vote for your country's 1st president of the post-war era, with all candidates from the German Army (Donitz excluded, for example). But those who were already dead by 1945 were not included, such as Rommel, Von Kluge, Reichenau etc... Plus, one must have assumed the rank of Field Marshal to qualify for the candidancy so the likes of Guderian were also written off.
Here is a list of candidates I have found:
How could you forget the great Heinrich Himmler? I'd vote for that man to be president of the US; get rid of the immigration problem once and for all.
The one who had a mom named...Apollonia
But Himmler tried to surrender to the Amis before Berlin fell. Don't need that kind of got running tbh. At least Goebbels was willing to go down with the ship. Anyone willing to sacrifice his kids for the nation should be commended tbh.
True but this is a hypothetical situation. So Hitler wouldn't have gone total re and been undermining his generals and Germany wouldn't have had their backs up against the wall.
But Hitler going full re is one of the main reasons the glory of National Socialism didn't prevail. Whether it was halting his generals at Dunquerque, stopping the attack on RAF airfields to focus on London, invasion of the Soviet Union in the winter of '41 without even giving his Wehrmacht coats, a re ed alliance with Japan even though the Japs were struggling with China and were never going to be able to invade the Soviet Union, declaring war on the US after Pearl Harbor, and so on. Adolph should have done like Stalin did with him and waited out America until they had their transatlantic bombers tbh.
rommel is not dead.
had lunch with him yesterday.
Leadership and allies were always Germany's downfall. They unquestionably had the greatest armies in both World Wars, but Hitler's stupidity killed them in WW2, and lack of any decent help from Austria-Hungary sabotaged Germany's chances in WWI.
It was before Naziism, but I'll take von Hindenburg or Ludendorff over any of their WW2 generals. Erich von Falkenhayn was ruthlessly good as well, but was hamstrung by having to help out the aforementioned rotting Hapsburg Dynasty.
Bismarck was a beast too (Franco-Prussian War) but was forced out by gimp-armed Willy II
They couldn't really with the allies in the air though. The BF-109s were and Hitler stupidly tried to put the Me262s in service as bombers instead of using them to pick off allied B-17s and B-24s. Most of the Luftwaffe's aces were dead by the time they rolled out the 262 anyways, which was their only hope of not getting slaughtered by American P-51s. And Luftwaffe bombers were just . Just a couple of bombs on each Stuka, Bf109, Me262, etc while the Allies 17's could just carpet bomb German cities into oblivion. I don't know if Hitler ed up worse trying to invade Russia too late and getting his troops frozen to death, or allying with Japan and declaring war on us when we could just keep cranking bombers and fighters out and gain total air superiority. LOL having to go to the V-1s and V-2s since the Luftwaffe was hopeless. Still, thanks Adolph for our space program.
That and he couldn't get along with the Hindenberg/Ludendorf duo.
It was stupid of Germany to even get into WWI. Demographics (their rising birthrate vs. France's falling birthrate) the decline of the British Empire and the crumbling of the Romanov dynasty would have made them the dominant power in Europe before too long anyway. There was no need for them to fight.
Wilhelm II was truly their downfall. You had one of the most powerful and technologically advanced countries in the world being led by basically a child in a grown man's body. It was like giving a kid the keys to a Lamborghini- eventually he's going to crack it up.
This is ultimately true. Germany was also way behind British naval superiority (as was everyone else), but they were tactically smarter than the British--just overwhelmed by sheer numbers though.
War was inevitable with or w/o the Archduke's assassination, imo--so it's easier to say they should've waited, imo. War could've started in 1912, too. If they break through at the Marne in 1914 or aren't forced to poach Western Front reinforcements to bolster that festering turd in the Balkans, then who's to say what could've happened.
I agree though, in both wars they were led by inept rulers with delusions of grandeur
Wasn't Wilhelm trying to stop the war at the last second only to find out Ludendorf and Hindenburg were the real power in Germany? That the war was going down because they wanted it to? I thought Wilhelm was just a puppet by the time the war actually started. It surely doesn't start without Wilhelm's penis envy with regard to the English navy kicking off the arms race, but wasn't he about as powerless as Hindenburg was by the early 30s?
To me, it was a mistake for Germany to launch the war against Russia while the UK was still standing. The war between Nazism and Bolshevik was inevitable, it would happen sooner or later but they could have delayed it by one or two years at least. The US would've probably stood off with UK torn down, and the Nazis would be able to focus on the eastern front. German navy was pretty weak compared to the British royal navy but they could even fill the Dover channel with dead corpses of soldiers if they were determined to destroy the UK tbh. A world with Germany ruling Europe and Africa, Japan ruling Asia and US for the rest of the world wouldn't look too bad on the map imho
Bingo.
You guys both got it all wrong. They should have continued on into the Soviet Union after taking Poland. Instead they signed that re ed non-aggression pact, giving Stalin two years to industrialize his peasant nation while they were off ing around in France, England, Holland, etc. Hitler should have gone straight east and taken down the commies while they were weak. No way in the US is committing troops to defend the Soviet Union 21 years after our troops were in a shooting war with the Bolsheviks. I mean the majority of Americans didn't even want to assist England in 1940, so no way it's politically possible to get into a war to fight for the communists. France wasn't going to do with their society in such chaos, and no way England goes it alone.
Hitler conquers the Soviet Union and all of a sudden he has tons of oil and tons of natural gas, not to mention all the living space he needs for his great German expansion. With all of that they probably have the money to put huge investments into military R & D, so now they can invade England with Me262s ripping the RAF Spitfires to shreds, with V1s and V2s pounding London and other urban areas, and then their bombers focused specifically on crippling the RAF.
Last edited by baseline bum; 06-07-2013 at 11:49 PM.
U.S.S.R. had been undergoing industrialization since the late 20's, though
I just don't see how you give Stalin two years to kick it into overdrive and prepare for war though. Among Hitler's many -ups this one could be the worst. The fact that Germans were eating was enough to ensure the people backed him. He didn't need to go into France and take Paris for a trophy. Should have focused on the big prize tbh.
I'd say Germany was doing pretty damn well for themselves up until the Battle of Britain. They had conquered pretty much all of Europe with relative ease. Going at the UK half- ed, then scrapping it and going at the Red Army was dumb. Pick one or the other and finish them off before you move on.
They scrapped Britain because they couldn't get air superiority and were thus stuck doing blind nighttime raids. England had nothing that was going to compete with the air force the Nazis were building up by about 44-45, while the early Luftwaffe would have had no trouble with the primitive Soviet air force. The Luftwaffe would have been a nasty force by the mid 40s without Americans carpet-bombing all their manufacturing centers. They were already developing swept-wing fighters by 45; our F-86 Sabre from the Korean war was lifted straight from Nazi designs (as was the Soviets' MiG-15). The West didn't even know it was possible to fly swept-wing planes until they got hold of the Germans' research.
Last edited by baseline bum; 06-08-2013 at 12:04 AM.
The soviet union was just too big for Germans imho, whether industrialized or not. Plus, Germany's army wasn't that strong in the fall of 1939, far from enough to defeat the soviet union. I kind of think the Germans just chose the weaker target to attack, which France was, and the battle in France earned them considerable experience which would turn out to be very helpful after the war with Russia broke out. Furthermore, Romania offered them little support in the war against Russia (just like Lebron's supporting casts during his cleveland years) and Italians couldn't even handle their own business well.
'Eh, there was no way Hitler was not invading the Soviet Union. Might as well have done it early and saved Western Europe for later to keep from getting DP'ed on two fronts like WWI. How the Hitler managed to be in basically the same situation as the Kaiser was when the west hated Russia is mind-blowing.
Like Rogue said, they weren't strong enough in '39 to take that on, nor could they achieve the element of surprise since the non-aggression pact wasn't signed yet. They should've just consolidated power for a couple years or gone full bore at Britain and finished the job. Instead Hitler prematurely invaded the Soviet Union, and Stalin made him call Tyrone.
They weren't strong enough in '41 either, but it was happening either way. I would have rather taken my chances in '39. I think you guys are underestimating the Wehrmacht. It was pretty impressive of them to get all that armor through the Ardennes; it's not like taking France was supposed to be some simple operation like Poland was. The fact that Stalin signed that non-aggression pact and the fact he kept ignoring Allied intel telling him the attack was coming tells me he wanted to buy as much time as he humanly could because he wasn't ready for Germany.
France was weak as during that era imho, better than Poland but not much, and they concentrated all their strength in Maginot which would turn out to be one of the biggest failures in military history. Germany was only allowed to have a troop of no more than 100,000 before 1936, they needed to restore their military strength and it should take considerable time. France was obviously the weaker target compared to Russia at the time and it was still possible to maintain peace with Bolshevik, while they were already at war with France & UK, so it was an easy decision to make imho.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
