ricardo_wrx

Very true. Hitler had some good ideas to running a well oiled country. The problem arose when he took things a little too far!
Most german engineering can be traced back to the *****. So all those Porche drivers....... just remember your driving a car that has it roots as a killing machine! Especially those tail happy 911's.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Einstein didn't surrender, somehow I doubt his bloodline agreed with the **** regime He went to the USA well before the Americans became involved.

Its true that they nabbed the scientists involved in the German war effort.

stilover

Yes very true, but. If Germany had not lost the war the Russian's would not have got what America left behind of the German rocket program, meaning Russia would not have the capabilities at the time to manufacture long range missiles. Thus, once Europe had succumbed to Germany, all of their might would/could have been turned onto Russia.
Russia only beat Germany in the fields, as so many German troops were fighting on all sides (extreme cold and lack of supplies also contributed to this). Once Europe had been concurred, Hitler would have enlisted every man from Europe into fighting Russia, plus they would have started shooting the B2 Rocket into Russia.
Also German Engineers were the first to attempt to purify uranium-235 the fuel for the atomic bomb. Had they succeeded, and fitted the warhead to the B2 rocket ........Bye Bye Russia. Probably Bye Bye America too.

ChefDude

i thought the russians were kicking german butt on the borders. it's well known the germans were incredibly ill equipped for the weather.

while we're at it, didn't hitler put off invading us due to some atrological anomoly? and we then subsequently then smashed his luftwaffe in the battle of britain?

555Rob555

The germans overstretched their supply lines in Russia. They made swift progress to Stalingrad and the Volga, but fast ran out of equipment.
If they had waited to attack, or had more supplies even the USA joining the war would have made little difference.

Sbradley

Though it's a moot point whether we would have won without American support or not, it was a few of Hitler's decisions that lost the war for Germany.

1) After Dunkirk he stopped at the Channel. It seems that he still thought he might be able to make a deal with Churchill.

2) After decimating the RAF, when they were on their very last legs he switched the emphasis of his attacks from destroying our military capability (which he was doing very successfully) to destroying our will to fight by blitzing cities (which didn't and never could work). There's little doubt that a fortnight more would have rendered the RAF incapable as a fighting force and his invasion could have taken place uder total German air superiority.

3) He attacked Russia at the wrong time. Instead of dealing with one front at a time he allowed his forces to become overstretched and failed to deal with either effectively as a result. Our successes in North Africa were due in part to the redeployment of German forces to the Eastern Front.

4) He delayed the depoyment of weapons that could have seriously affected the bomber campaign against Germany after the USA joined in by insisting that they were made multi-role. So take an excellent jet interceptor and delay it by 2 years (until you don't have the fuel to run it in numbers or the factories to build it any more) by fitting bomb racks...

There's more but the general gist is there.

SB

stilover

He was just scared of `Dads Army`

mattstant

Youre forgetting a certain Mr Frank Whittle as well.

I hear we are about abandon production of the Harrier to the fcking Americans as well

check these facts out as well

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/more_facts.html

especially this paragraph

A FAMOUS CHURCHILL SPEECH

In a memorable speech, Churchill asked America "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." But America wouldn't 'give' anything without payment. After two years of war, Roosevelt had drained Britain dry, stripping her of all her assets in the USA, including real estate and property. The British owned Viscose Company, worth £125 million was liquidated, Britain receiving only £87 million. Britain's £1,924 million investments in Canada were sold off to pay for raw materials bought in the United States. To make sure that Roosevelt got his money, he dispatched the American cruiser Louisville to the South African naval base of Simonstown to pick up £42 million worth of British gold, Britain's last negotiable asset, to help pay for American guns and ammunition. Not content with stripping Britain of her gold and assets, in return for 50 old World War I destroyers, (desperately needed by Britain as escort vessels) he demanded that Britain transfer all her scientific and technological secrets to the USA. Also, he demanded 99 year leases on the islands of Newfoundland, Jamaica, Trinidad and Bermuda for the setting up of American military and naval bases in case Britain should fall.

Of the 50 lend-lease destroyers supplied to Britain, seven were lost during the war. The first was taken over by a British crew on September 9, 1940. After 1943, when no longer useful, eight were sent to Russia, while the others were manned by French, Polish and Norwegian crews. These destroyers were renamed when they arrived in Britain. All were given the name of a town or city, hence the term 'Town Class' destroyer. During the course of the war, Britain had recieved 12 Billion, 775 million dollars worth of goods under the Lend-Lease program.

mattstant

Everyone forgets that the royal Navy was also still very much intact and could have caused mayhem amongst any Invasion attempt

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

This is what my old boy (92, and served on Lancasters DURING WW2), says.

He also says that American Jewry helped to CAUSE WW2 after the armistice in WW1 with their huge demands for reparations which Germany could never repay.

He always refers to USA as the Jewnited States, and loathes them.

Luan Pra bang

A whole load of issues with this one but Stalin was bleeding hitler dry for resources the same way America was doing the same to us Hitler ran out of ways to pay Stalin so invaded instead. I still think in the short term Stalin won that war and had UK US over a barrel by the end as he held all of the playing cards

Buckwheat

In one way, Mussolini lost the war for Germany. Why? Because his disastrous invasion of Greece and failure to hold Libya against the British meant the Germans had to commit troops to South East Europe and North Africa. So Barbarossa, intended to start in April, had to be postponed until late June 1941. The German army, had they invaded the USSR in April, would have been in Moscow by October before the Winter snows arrived. As it turned out they didn't reach the outskirts until late November, by which time the temperature had dropped to sixty below....

Sbradley

Not forgotten, Matt, but without air cover they'd have been massacred. Look at Force Z, for example, 2 (or was it 3?) battleships sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers. Or the Bismark, effectively sunk by Fleet Air Arm Swordfish biplanes (!), though the ultimate blow was struck by another capital ship. And yes, I know she was actually sunk by torpedos from HMS Devonshire. But the principle is the same.

An invasion fleet crossing the channel with full air cover would have been damn' well unstoppable. Especially with Luftwaffe dive bombers, Ju-88s (with torpedos again) and heavy fighters in that confined space available to attack any opposing naval force...

SB

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

Except in 1940 the Germans didn't have any torpedo bombers, because everyone thought that dropping torpedos from a plane wrecked them (the torpedos that is). It was later British research that found a way, and let to the raid on Taranto. The Germans would have had to resort to bombing - dangerous to small ships, but useless against the battleships of the Home Fleet, which would have massacred the German invasion fleet.


But even if the Germans invaded in May (the earliest that had been scheduled) and had actually made it as far as Moscow, it's doubtful if Russia would have fallen - Moscow was important politically, but not militarily. But all that is by-the-by: the question was: what would have happened if the USA had stayed out of the war. Simple: the Russians would have won on their own, and all of Europe would have been communist.

M

Sbradley

Um, we had Swordfish and Albacores way before 1940, the Germans may not have had Ju88's but they had Arado floatplanes. All armed with torpedoes...

Plus our battleships had wooden decks in the main, which made them incredibly vulnerable to dive bombers (and, incidentally, to groups of 15" shells fired from the Bismark but that's a different story) as they were designed when air power was just a joke.

Add a mass of U-boats and the German navy as well - E-boats operating from coastal ports would have been a major threat plus the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau (sp?), Bismark and Tirpitz and my belief stands that we'd have been hammered.

SB

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

I think you are confusing battleships and battlecruisers? Easily done - even the admiralty struggled to remember that battelcruisers were NOT designed to fight battleships, as they had paper armour. I'm talking the proper battleships, like the QE class, R-class etc.


M

Sbradley

I may be confusing them - I admit I was thinking primarily of the Hood, which was of course a battle cruiser. But I'm pretty sure that the R class and the PoW class both had wooden decks as well. In fact the only capital ships we had with steel decks in 1940 were carriers, I think.

Caveat: I may be wrong.

Nonetheless, with full air superiority over the channel, the Germans would have been able to blockade the channel with u-boats and their own High Seas Fleet, rendering a naval counter-offensive impossible. Then it would have been game over...

SB

Leslie

There is no doubt that we would have been very poorly placed without their aid and alliance during the war.

Les