How the Third Reich Could Have Won

WWII Autism

Since the discourse has rounded once again towards WWII revisionism, given the recent Martyr Made interview with Tucker Carlson it makes sense to now provide additional historical analysis. I wanted to complete additional research before writing this, but given the nature of the discourse the timeliness of reply becomes all the more important.

ABSTRACT

The Third Reich could absolutely have achieved strategic victory in WWII. The basic requirements for this victory were as follows:

1. Most importantly, the prevention at all costs of the American entry into the war. As Sean McMeekin writes, American industry and Lend-Lease were the decisive factor determining the war’s outcome.¹

2. Greater Axis coordination in prosecuting the conflict, especially in systematically defeating the British in 1941-1942. Thereby bringing the British to peace terms.

3. Timing Barbarossa correctly, preferably by delaying until at least six months after Britain had come to peace terms. No earlier than summer 1943.

4. Last, but not least, much earlier German entry into the Balkans, the Mediterranean and North Africa. This is in order to facilitate goals number 2 and 3.

To test this thesis, I along with Charlemagne, and several other associates of the OGC, play tested this Grand Strategy using the best possible methods available to us. We used Axis and Allies 1942 to check if this thesis was possible. At the OGC secret bunker, I myself played as literally Hitler, and Charlemagne the Japanese. Using this strategy and delaying American entry into North Africa by luckily destroying all the pre-allocated American transports, we secured Axis victory in the east just on the eve of Operation Overlord. Thus, we proved that victory for the Reich was possible.

ASSUMPTIONS

In any sort of historical “what if” scenario, many assumptions are required. There are a few assumptions that my plan requires in order to make sense of historical narrative. Probably the most important is that everything which happened in the war up to the conclusion of the battle of Dunkirk happened exactly as it occurred in established history. So, the German and later Soviet invasion of Poland, the Axis invasion of Norway and Denmark, the Low Countries, and France all count for this purpose.

The next assumption is the obvious one. We today have people who have accessed the Soviet archives, Top Secret Allied files, and therefore have the benefit of eighty years of painstaking historical research into the personalities, accomplishments, life histories, failures and foibles of the many leaders involved in this conflict. The Second World War is probably the most studied period of all world history, bar none. The information now available cannot be said to fully reflect the current narratives surrounding the war. Therefore, we are operating with the full benefit of hindsight.

War is a matter of morale. In “total war” the populations of the belligerent countries are required for mass mobilization. Therefore, governments need to manufacture consent to sustain the war effort. Any nation which consistently takes unmitigated losses on the battlefield with no positive developments to offset these losses will find itself unable to sustain the morale and will to fight through wartime propaganda alone.

In wartime, a nation which begins to feel it is losing the conflict decisively will change leadership to more hardline commanding generals, cabinet members, or heads of state. This often does not structurally alter the immutable fact of geography, logistics, economics, or total numbers in manpower and equipment. But leadership being what it is, the theory goes that if you change out the leadership, the change in emotional response of those underneath the commander will help reverse course. This is essentially what the British did with the accession of Churchill to the First Lord of the Admiralty and later the Prime Minister positions. The Third Reich in its death throes, attempted similar shake-ups in its military leadership. But nation-states will attempt to perform such shifts in order to try to achieve victory. A different leader with a different approach and style might very well get a more favorable outcome. Needless to say, to overcome strategic blunders requires not just a change in leadership, but a concurrent change in strategy and underlying logistical and geographic conditions.

With these assumptions in place, we can now delve properly into the subject material.

Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain

We will begin analysis with the first real strategic mistake of the war on Hitler’s part. This mistake was to allow the Luftwaffe to be attritted in a failed campaign against Britain, without securing a land invasion. In both strategic and propaganda terms, this was a disaster for the Germans. Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain have a near mythological status for a reason. This reason is simple. Dunkirk is viewed as the successful evacuation of the BEF and French allied personnel to Britain. The Battle of Britain is the first real strategic victory for the Allied powers, and it was against the main source of Axis power in the early war: the Luftwaffe. In directly attacking Britain, Hitler and Göring gave the allies a desperately needed morale boost, and the will to fight on after the battle was over. Hitler signaled to the British the full limitations of his military might. So then, the real question for the Germans in 1940-1941 is: how on earth do you make Churchill come to terms?

In my view, the best description of how this works psychologically is how it is described in the joint German-Danish Television series 1864. General von Wrangel is confronted in his campaign tent by Helmut von Moltke the elder. Von Wrangel states in a geriatric delirium the best way to defeat a democracy: you have to wear them out. You must exhaust their will to fight. This is a fundamental contradistinction to the Prussian way of maneuver warfare. The willingness of the Germans to fight the enemy on terms advantageous to the Allies is surprising. Therefore, the Battle of Britain should never have been fought. My theory is as follows: a nation’s regime basically has three successive strategic military defeats before it loses all credibility and must make peace. But every military leader can get one major blunder to be overlooked, especially with propaganda efforts. Dunkirk represents that blunder for Churchill.

Hypothetically, let us say that military force A had inflicted three times the losses in killed, wounded, and captured of force B, and had also captured their artillery and tanks and forced them to quit the field. Who was victorious in that engagement? Force A of course. This is why Dunkirk is not a victory for the British by any rational metric. The requirement to re-equip several divisions worth of combat power in late 1940 was absolutely detrimental to the British cause. Even in 1941, the British needed more armor in North Africa. If the Germans had declined to execute Barbarossa in 1941, and allocated more forces to North Africa, the disparity between Axis and Allied forces in North Africa would have been substantially more favorable to Rommel.

Fundamentally, this should represent a great strength and vulnerability of democratic versus authoritarian states. Democratic states, which utilize popular sovereignty as their claim to political legitimacy, are therefore vulnerable to this dynamic. They are incredibly strong in the short term, especially given that governments can use wartime propaganda to manufacture consensus. However, Churchill’s accession to leadership, Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain, basically reset British morale. This ensured that historically Churchill was under no pressure to make peace terms in late 1940 to early 1941.

NORTH AFRICA

As previously stated, the Axis should have planned for the knockout of Britain where it was most vulnerable. Given the fact of the Italian entry in the war, it would therefore make strategic sense to implement an anti-access/area-denial plan to prevent British access to the Suez. The British strength pre-war was in its navy, and likely would not have made peace unless substantial losses were sustained in that branch. The Royal Navy, along with Britain’s island geography, is a substantial part of the British national self-conception. They obviously could not be threatened at home unless the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy were no longer numerically sufficient to defend the home isles. So, Hitler needed to force the British to defend where they were weakest: in their empire. This is where strategic considerations come into play: the Japanese signing of the Tripartite Pact on September 27, 1940, meant that the British from that point on had to think about defending their imperial possessions in addition to defending the home isles. Official declaration of war between Britain and Japan would not happen until 14 months later on December 7, 1941.

However, once it became clear to Hitler that Churchill was unwilling to make peace after Dunkirk, his strategy should have been to prepare to squeeze the British empire from multiple directions. This is why he required in 1940-41 to capture the Balkans and enter the Mediterranean. The delay of Balkan capture due to Italian incompetence, Taranto, and the Battle of Britain all contributed to setting preconditions for Axis setbacks in 1942-1943, which were the decisive years of the war in my view. Hitler’s decision to attack Britain directly using the Luftwaffe led to the unsustainable loss of aircraft and trained pilots which could have been put to better use elsewhere. The ability of the Axis to use aircraft in the Mediterranean in late 1940 would very likely have prevented a successful British attack on the Italian ships based at Taranto. Using medium range aircraft to implement an anti-access/area denial strategy in coordination with Italian surface ships and submarines would have denied the British the ability to supply and reinforce their forces in Africa in 1940-1941. This would have been the best thing for Hitler to do, since in 1940 his appeal to Churchill to make peace in exchange for the continued existence of the Empire was likely not viewed by the British as a credible threat. Remember, Hitler didn’t have a navy which could compete on numerical terms with the Royal Navy. Thus, to threaten the empire with dismemberment likely was the only way Hitler could have forced the Royal Navy to fight in an area already contested. That is to say, North Africa. The British would have been loath to lose Egypt and the Suez Canal. The coordination of naval and air assets in combined arms whilst using Egypt as a lure may have drawn in the Royal Navy to commit to battle. Perhaps the Royal Navy could have been brought to decisive battle if Gibraltar was threatened? If the Axis had established air bases in the Vichy controlled Morocco, then Luftwaffe assets could have been used to sink the Royal Navy in decisive engagement. Under such adverse conditions with minimal air cover, this would have been a strategic defeat for Churchill.

Timing is everything. Even if the Balkans campaign and the capture of Crete was completed as it was historically in 1941, so long as the Axis had air superiority in the Mediterranean the Royal Navy would not have been able operate effectively there. If the Luftwaffe had retained a highly trained, experienced flotilla of pilots with planes on station in Sicily, Sardinia, the straits of Gibraltar, and later Crete, then the British would have had to deploy the Royal Air force there in order to try opening up access. The Axis needed to capture Malta to prevent its usage as an airbase to attack Italian shipping. Even if the air forces which fought the Battle of Britain were instead contesting the North African theater, this simply by positioning would have negated a major British home advantage: the usage of primitive radar and interior lines to intercept attacking Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. Without this advantage, the British would have suffered higher attrition rates for aircraft whilst already being outnumbered. Why did Hitler attack Britain directly? Because Germany itself was being bombed, especially in civilian areas. Hitler could have used a part of the Luftwaffe more defensively, preventing British bombing raids and disrupting British shipping instead. Hitler allowed himself to be goaded by these raids into making a strategic mistake and proved that he really did not have a plan for defeating Britain except by conquest. He did not have the correct forces in sufficient number to accomplish this goal at the time of Operation Sea Lion. The lack of an alternative plan and the decision to invade the Soviet Union in Summer 1941 were factors contributing to his ultimate defeat.

THE WAR IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC

With greater focus by the Axis powers on defeating Churchill, even the mythologized effect of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain could have been overcome if Britain had been the sole belligerent against the Axis. Why did Hitler declare war on America in late 1941 when he had no business in the Pacific? Because of the actions of the Americans. Again, timing is everything. Prior to Pearl Harbor, there was a period where the Japanese were formally allied with the Axis but had not formally declared war on any of the allied powers. The United States had levied economic sanctions on them. The United States had involved itself in the North Atlantic by providing U.S. destroyer escort for merchant vessels. Under the extension of the Pan-American Security Zone through the Atlantic Charter, U.S. destroyers escorted merchant vessels almost to Iceland. So-called “neutrality patrols” tracked U-boats in the Atlantic from the outset of the conflict in 1939 and relayed that information to the Royal Navy. Lastly, the USS Greer incident in September 1941 is a notable escalation in tensions because vessels from both future belligerent nations fired on each other. Furthermore, the Destroyers for Bases agreement on September 2, 1940, transferred naval assets to Britain. Later, this would be augmented to bring the total number of obsolescent destroyers provided to Churchill to 40.

Therefore, Hitler’s decision to declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941, can be characterized through the following lens. His military allies had been sanctioned. A formally neutral power provided location (targeting data) to a belligerent party. That same neutral power would provide military escort to legitimate targets of war well beyond its territorial waters. Since 1939, it had expanded through the Cash and Carry program the ability for Britain and others to purchase military goods, arms, and munitions. Post onset of Barbarossa, it directly provided military hardware to Britain and the U.S.S.R. It had fired on Germany’s vessels. It had begun a peacetime draft and expansion of its naval forces. Through the 1940 Tizard Mission, it had accepted technology transfers of valuable military research like the jet engine and the Frisch-Peierls memorandum which demonstrated the feasibility of the atomic bomb. It must be said that despite the Axis’s hostile interpretation of it, the Atlantic Charter was not a formally agreed diplomatic treaty. Formally announced 14 August 1941, it was essentially a verbal agreement between two statesmen. If one of those two statesmen left office, it would have had no binding diplomatic effect. However, all of these things taken together likely gave Hitler the impression that there would be war with America at some point, and sooner rather than later. I am inclined to disagree with this interpretation and think that without a direct attack on its soil, America could never have been coaxed into the conflict. We must remember that this era did not have “proxy wars” as a regular occurrence. So, when a formally neutral power commits to this kind of action against a belligerent power, what is the belligerent power to do? The options are two-fold. First, declare war. Second, avoid war by accepting patiently all of these infractions. Despite all the help given by the U.S. prior to its entry into the conflict, Hitler should have insisted to the Japanese government that they needed to avoid a war with the United States until at least after Britain was forced to come to terms.

OSTFRONT

The possibility of a joint American-British alliance should have rattled Hitler. His biggest mistake was declaring war on the United States, thus allowing Roosevelt a free hand in implementing the “Europe First” grand strategy of the Allied Powers. As Sean McMeekin writes, it also allowed Roosevelt to give the Soviets every last conceivable piece of aid - military, industrial, or otherwise, necessary for prosecuting the war. Even with the small amounts of aid provided before Pearl Harbor, the casualty figures for tanks and other forms of equipment that Mcmeekin cites compared to the Soviet production numbers in 1941 when the U.S.S.R. was already at or near full wartime production capacity are illuminating. The numbers of tanks and aircraft destroyed could not have been replaced by Soviet industry alone. This rate of attrition compared to the 1941 tank production numbers multiplied by a generous 50 percent, added to prewar tank numbers (Total Tanks = X +(Y*1.5)) for the numbers listed on Wikipedia gives us a ballpark number for what Soviets could have expected to produce sans lend-lease. Subtract attrition figures, and we can see how long it would take the Germans to win logistically. Subtracting attrition, complete Soviet military collapse would have likely occurred sometime in 1944. Therefore, a war against the Soviet Union would never have been a quick war. Even still, without American help the Soviet Union would have lost.

There are other reasons why I say that Hitler should have postponed war with the Soviet Union until summer 1943. We have already discussed the optimal strategy for forcing Britain to come to the peace table, but as has been mentioned before, the decision to invade the Soviet Union gave the Germans basically six months to reinforce, retrain, re-equip, and move their entire allocated invasion army for Operation Barbarossa to the east. This, simply put, was not an adequate amount of time. Many of Hitler’s senior generals thought the same. But on a technical level, as well as a numerical level, tanks and aircraft were the decisive arms of the war. The Germans managed to re-arm their air forces for the eastern front after the failure of Sea Lion. But I am a tank autist, not an airplane autist, so we will discuss armor here.

To put it bluntly, the technical superiority of the German armor and anti-tank weaponry would have far surpassed the Soviet Union’s capacity in the same regard by 1943. The problems the Germans had in terms of armor in Barbarossa against the T-34, KV-1, and KV-2 tanks were technically solved by mid-1943. This is due not just in terms of innovation, but also proliferation. By mid-1943, all of the weapon systems which characterize the Wehrmacht Panzer corps were available in plenty. The proliferation of the 5cm PAK-38, 7.5cm PAK-40, improved Teller Mines, the Panzerfaust, the Marder I, II, III, the Sturmgeschütz III, the Nashorn, the Elefant. The Marder II’s and III’s were fitted on the chassis of Panzer II’s and Panzer 38(t)’s. This required time to retrofit. Even the small 3.7 cm PAK-36 received a shaped charge round as a munitions upgrade in early 1942 which prevented it from becoming obsolete. This isn’t even getting into proper tanks yet. In terms of proper panzers, of course the Tiger I was available starting in late 1942. But in the main, the upgrades to German armor were substantial between 1941 and 1943 in comparison to the Soviet armor. Panzer IV ausf. F2 was armed with a 75mm high velocity gun, which was an upgrade to the earlier variants of the same tank with a lower velocity gun of 75mm. The Panzer III was upgraded to a short barrel 5cm, and later variants were given an adequate higher velocity longer barreled 5cm gun. The StuG III was upgraded to higher velocity, longer barreled 7.5cm guns in late 1942. Needless to say, by mid-1943 the German armor and anti-armor capabilities were more than sufficient to deal with the best Soviet armor of the same period. I have excluded the Panzerschreck because that was developed via captured American bazookas in the Tunisian campaign. Therefore, that weapons system would not have been developed by the Germans if the U.S. had not entered the war. Because all these upgrades were in service in quantity by mid 1943, it would have been optimal to delay Barbarossa until mid-1943. That is to say, after the British had been defeated in North Africa sans American entry into the war.

The other angle in regard to armor is the Soviet side of the equation. Most people probably believe that the T-34 was the mainstay of the Red Army. To a great degree it was, especially in the late war. However, most of the Red Army tank park was of comparable capability to other nation’s tanks. This was true even in 1943. The T-70, T-26, represented substantial minority of the Soviet tank inventory in 1941-1942. Those tanks were basically equivalent to the German Panzer III. If the Germans had begun Barbarossa with the upgrades previously mentioned, then even the T-34 and KV series tanks would have been hard countered by the widespread proliferation of weapons capable of defeating the best Soviet armor. Not the most widely available Soviet combat vehicles, but the best. There are several problems with gauging exactly how much the Soviets were capable of producing, due to the sheer quantity of raw and processed materials the Allies contributed through Lend-Lease. In fact, there is a gigantic jump in 1942 production of all combat vehicles despite German capture of key factories in the first six months of Barbarossa and the displacement of soviet factories into the interior of the U.S.S.R. This gigantic production increase in 1942 overwhelms the 1941 figures and displays the incredible allied coordination of materiel cited by McMeekin. If this increase was only in one category, we might say that it was due to Soviet prioritization of certain vehicles. However, this increase in production is across all categories of armored vehicle. We can therefore observe that since the Soviet Union was fighting with wartime production levels - operating at maximum capacity - for the second half of 1941 and had already increased production of armaments in the first half above peacetime levels. This observation means that at least since the start of Barbarossa in late June 1941, Soviet production was at or near its peak. This is the reason why I have allocated the generous 50% modifier to our hypothetical equation. Assuming better management and acquisition of raw materials domestically, it might have been possible to increase armored vehicle production to that level. In any case, the Germans should have prepared for a buffer between theoretical Soviet production and actual Soviet production. Remember, we are supposed to believe that the U.S.S.R. basically quadrupled its light and medium tank production and doubled heavy tank production from 1941-1942 even as they were in the process of moving entire factories east of the Urals. Given the figures in tanks, aircraft, armor plate, steel, and aluminum as well as all the additional requirements of war provided by the U.S. to the U.S.S.R., McMeekin’s figures should be absolutely convincing to all that Lend-Lease was the decisive factor of the war. Without that help, Stalin would have lost even while the British were still involved.

Stalin’s supposed preemptive attack into the Third Reich in 1941 - which was preempted by Barbarossa - possibly might have helped the world’s perception of the Germans. One of the major reasons why the Western Left turned against the Third Reich was the breaking of the Molotov-Ribbentrop neutrality pact. This is reflected in opinion polls at the time. This is a type of person who absolutely would have been in Roosevelt’s coalition - even cabinet. Much of the American military aid through lend-lease was initially provided the U.S.S.R. post initiation of Barbarossa. The fact of a secret Japanese neutrality pact with the Soviet Union in 1941 as well proves that Hitler could not rely on Japanese help in prosecuting the Eastern Front. Given the subpar performance of the Red Army in the Winter War, and the previous purges in the late 1930’s of experienced leadership, the Red Army was not a serious threat except numerically. The Red Army had the largest air force in the world in 1941. Offensively, these were a threat. The early weeks of Barbarossa and the destruction of the Red Air Force on the ground is a point I am willing to concede to critics on the decisiveness of striking first in the air war. The more offensively deployed Red Air Force assets were able to be attacked because they were deployed closer to the pre-Barbarossa borders than they might have been. If the Germans had adopted a defensive deployment for their aircraft in the east, they could have mitigated a Soviet pre-emptive attack on the Luftwaffe and prevented undue attrition. Ideologically, both powers were indeed committed to war with each other over the long term. It was Hitler’s responsibility to delay that war until he was fully prepared.

THE PACIFIC THEATER

As previously mentioned, because the United States provided the material and logistical requirements necessary for the defeat of the Axis powers, the prevention of American entry into the war was a prerequisite for Axis strategic success. Regardless of what the Americans were providing prior to their entry to the conflict, that aid paled in comparison to what they sent after a formal declaration of war. Hitler therefore should have been willing to have a dilemma after Pearl Harbor: whether to accept as a military ally Japan’s decision to enter the conflict or be willing break his military treaty with Japan. We all know his decision.

However, if Japan could have been persuaded to avoid conflict with the United States, or was told that Germany would not have supported them in such an event, then perhaps the Japanese might have thought twice about attacking the U.S. preemptively and unilaterally. This is another point about the lack of Axis war coordination. It basically didn’t happen at all. Why go to war with the United States? The economic sanctions are one thing, but they aren’t enough objectively speaking to provoke a declaration of war. No, the better option for the Japanese was to coordinate with the other axis powers in attacking Britain. The resources that Japan needed access to such as rubber, fuel, etc. were all available by attacking the British Empire and Dutch colonies in east Asia. Germany wanted to obtain a peace with Britain. Italy had interests in Africa. Japan wanted the raw materials of southeast Asia. All of these interests rationally should have meant that the strategic plan to execute Barbarossa in summer 1941 was a bit of a misstep. If the Axis had continued to fight solely in the North Atlantic and North African theaters, by the end of 1941 Japan’s entry into the war might have been the straw which broke Churchill’s back. However, Japan’s coordination with the other two axis powers should have been to threaten India whilst the British were fighting desperately in North Africa. The near-simultaneous losses of Singapore, HMS Prince of Wales & HMS Repulse, and the threatening of India and Suez by land and sea would have destroyed Churchill’s credibility as a war leader. It would have displayed to the world that Dunkirk was a mirage, and that the defensive victory in Operation Sea Lion was not repeatable throughout the rest of the Empire. This would have been the best chance for the downfall of Churchill’s government, thus leading to another leadership change and a peace settlement.

The plan is working…

The Allies (British) finally get around to Operation Torch

CONCLUDING REMARKS

A peace agreement with Britain after she was decisively knocked out of the war was the best hope that the Axis powers had to achieve victory. We must again cite the well-known American sympathetic feelings towards the British cause in the years 1940-41. However, there was no public support in the United States for a war in Europe until after Hitler declared war on the U.S. in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. There likely was public support for even some material support prior to Pearl Harbor, but that’s definitely not the same as full-scale war. This was therefore a major unlooked at factor in Axis war planning. The Germans absolutely knew better than to begin a war on two fronts. American sympathetic feelings were used by Roosevelt to provide assistance in various forms in order to prop the British up until a pathway to bringing the United States into the conflict opened up. Even if the United States and Germany were “destined” to go to war at some point, that war could not be prosecuted by the Germans at the same time as fighting in the east and against Britain. Using the strategic planning outlined in this article, Hitler might very well have actually succeeded had he properly used geography and the resources available to him.

“You zee, Herr Churchill? Zere is no zuccess against ze might of FORTRESS EUROPA!”

1. McMeekin, Sean. Stalin’s War.