""This would have dramatically changed the course of the war"" Topic

I found this the other day : link

I then tried to find more info on the subject and found very little, unlike say the whole metric tons worth of info on German infra-red technology on a near pornographic level of detail. And the usual comments about it just barely having missed winning the war for the nazis.

Aren't such statements a bit far-fetched, we saw plenty of new weapons developed in both World Wars that seemed to have all the potential to win the war in one fell swoop, here are some examples :

Light Machineguns (Chauchat, Lewis, BAR), light infantry artillery (Stokes Mortar), Gas, Landships (Mark IV), Submachineguns (Bergmann, Villar Perosa), Main battle tanks (T-34), Flamethrowers, Radio, Helicopters, Radar, Asdic, Atomic Bombs etc.

Aircraft like the Me262 or the Ho 229 are often bandied about as being complete game breakers, yet you had planes like the Mosquito who already outran most of their opponents and the Allies were working on their own jets. Yet it's often implied that the Germans would somehow retain their perceived lead almost indefinitely and eventually win because by the time the US had a Super-Sabre, the Germans would deploy the 1947 equivalent of the F22.

Wouldn't the Martini-Henry rifle not be an automatic win against an iron-age level army ? And we still had an Ishandlwana and it took several battles to defeat the Zulus.

I tend to get the feeling that a lot of claims about the superiority of a certain new weapon assume that the opposition will either be completely flabbergasted by this new device and be unable to overcome its advantages and be completely unable to match or even surpass it because the wonder weapon would bring on an immediate and inevitable victory over the enemy.

How many Me 262 jets did Germany need to defeat the allies and force their surrender ? How fast could they produce them, with a month or two of extra time in 1945 have made such a radical difference ? Would none ever get shot down while they scythed whole squadrons of Mustangs and Lancasters out of the skies ?

Point is that the Germans may have had all those wonder toys, it would have merely delayed the inevitable and made the war that bit harder and the casualty list a bit longer, but a sudden and utter victory seems hard to imagine.

<puts on MMH hat> A lot of this has to do with the technological/tactical obsession a lot of folks have regarding military history. For these folks it's all about who has the cooler toys and who was tactically superior; that's the key to winning the war. However, this point of view ignores that wars are nearly always really 'won' on the operational/strategic/logistical levels. Technology isn't irrelevant, but it's also not a trump card. So that's a long-winded way to say I agree with you; Germany didn't lose because it didn't get it's war-winning tech into the field in time, it lost because it didn't have a viable strategy for actually winning the war. </takes of MMH hat>

-Will

And yet the atomic bomb *did* prove to be a game changer. All the sudden, Japan agreed it was time to make this stop. The weekend before, they showed no such intention.

The Allies had some pretty innovative stuff too – just not as sexy as the German stuff. Look at the Mulberry harbours and PLUTO – ideas that were not even thought feasible by Germans but aimed at overcoming logistical difficulties seen by Allied planners, an area often ignored by German generals.

Sometimes technology IS a battle winner, or at least tips the balance one way significantly. Consider the British developments in Radar and electronic warfare – they out-thought and out tech'ed the Germans to win the air war in 1940.

Well, the allies developed the computer and the atomic weapons, the Germans developed high speed aerodynamics and guided missiles/ICBMs…. All influence our modern world, but the first of them most of all.

I have always wondered, about the "game breaking" aspect of the A bomb, if it would really have been so if developed 3-4 years before and dropped by the Doolittle raid for example. Maybe it wouldn't work as an ender, sparking instead a (even) more fanatical and suicidal effort by the Japanese, not to talk about Germans… By summer '45, Japan had already lost the war, they were just taking the most enemies possible while going down…

Also, people tend to forget what GildasFacit said; the first working assault rifle was a Soviet made one early in the war; rocket propelled planes were designed in the early 40s; France was only one step away of developing fully armoured (not infantry support) formations, while the world's heaviest, hardest tank would have been a further development of the KV series had the Germans not attacked and changed Russian priorities. Etc.

Mulberry Harbour, PLUTO – good examples. As are the dodge truck and the Liberty ship.

Let's suppose the Germans could have got the ME 262 into mass production – what would have prevented the allies flattening the factories, the airfields, the houses of the workforce ? What would have stopped the USAF sending whole squadrons of fighters to lurk over the airfields waiting for the returning Me 262s and shooting them up as they landed ?

The Allies had out produced the germans – and the Me 262, beautiful object though it may be, was never going to be enough to make a real difference. A real scare to the allies, but not a war winner on its own.

I thought we all knew the M1 Garand was the rifle that won the war!!

I've also been sceptical about the A bomb as well. If used correctly at the right time it would have a massive impact. But even a weapon of that power needs to be used over and over for it to have a real meaning. A one-off might not cause an automatic knock-out.

Say the Germans have a working bomb in 1944 with the means to deliver it as far as Moscow or Washington. The one dropped on Moscow might have more impact than one on London or Washington. Stalin held so many reins, that his death would probably send the USSR into chaos for a while, while it might cause a massive setback to the UK or US, but having a very solid command structure other people would take over and one can hardly imagine the US/UK backing down from such an attack, it would be seen as another Pearl Harbor.

In fact it might be more useful for the Germans to destroy the troops on the Normandy beaches with a single bomb or drop it in the middle of a massive concentration of Soviet forces.

Similarly the allies bombing Germany earlier in the war might strengthen their resolve and retaliate by other means.

Nations attacked with atomic weapons would probably break out chemical warfare as retaliation.

Used against a strongly weakened Japan, the bomb proved very effective, but it might not have worked as well in another context.

I used to, in my youth, find these topics tantalizing. Now I just find them tiresome.

I find them so because they make a colossal assumption that is univerally and at all times false- that once you begin a war that you can control it. This is the greatest pomposity and conceit of man, and it has been so since the Peloponesian War with the speech of the Athenian envoys to the Spartan Ephors "Consider while there is still time the inscrutable nature of war and how when prolonged it often becomes a matter of mere chance" right up to Clausewitz, the most misquoted man in the whole business who essentially said that War develops a logic and a plan all its own and that control (in the sense we mean it) is impossible.

A case could be made that an atom bomb dropped by Doolittle on the raid would not have brought the end of the war because the Japanese government was far more monolithic, far more united, far more the prisoner of their own delusions in 1942 than they were in 1945 where many in the government were already desperately seeking a way out (How desperate must you be to try and deal through the Soviets).

As for all these other things, WWI and others showed that there is always a period of small initial advantage at the advent of a new weapon, but that counter-measures, copying, and eventually marginalization is always the resonse. In the end, what IS clear from both WWI and WWII is that BOTH victors and vanquished were unalterably and irrevocably changed by the war and thus the reasons they got into the war were by the end of it somewhat attenuated and mostly-- irrelevant.

Hitler made all his gains by bluff, threat, diplomacy, intimidation and control of the situation so that he could guarantee the outcome. That is not only were the events of the late 30's controllable IN PEACETIME, but there was the opportunity of pulling back from the brink and coming at it another way, or realizing that you've had your run of luck and picking up your chips and walking away from the table.

But… Hitler was a madman.

When Hitler invaded Poland, and almost a week later Britain and France declared war, he was in his office and glowered at Ribbentrop demanding to know "How did we get into this!?!"

Someone on this list once said it best. The best "wonder-weapon" the Germans could have fielded was a new leader in 1939.

The best wonder-weapon for the allies would have been a French President with backbone in 1934.

War is terrible. It is all Hell. You can no more mitigate it's savagery than send appeals to the thunderstorm.

Production, logistics, and FUEL, Speer and wonder weapons aside,that's why and how they were set up to lose. Grit, planning, and determination backed by real fighting by the Allies guaranteed that loss.

I think all the German toys actually shortened the war buy taking resources away from making more of the weapons that they knew worked, i.e. making 5 Stugs instead of one Tiger tank.
For my money the war winning tech was the radar and the M-1 rifle and the T-34 tank.

People underestimate the value of deceptive counterintelligence warfare. It is arguable that the phony buildup of inflatable tanks and plywood aircraft designed to draw the German attentions away from Normandy to Pas de Callais.

Also, the cracking of the Enigma code and the Japanese code in the Pacific were both, IMHO, huge game changers.

Few other weapons could compete with the damage these coups of intelligence managed to do, along with many other acts like it.

As to weapons that changed war AFTER the fact, the STG44 comes to mind. It formed the basis on which the modern assault rifle emerged, which is probably the deadliest small arm in history, overall. Maybe it did little to stop the Red Tide from overwhelming Germany, but it did change warfare, and the way we fight it on the tactical level. It also gave immense firepower to untrained masses.

Unless a weapon can either win the war in two months OR cause such a massive disruption to the other side that it can never recover then it will have neglible effect on the outcome. With very few exceptions the technologies used by both sides in WWII were quickly matched except where national ideology got in the way (Japan and radar for example).

"it might be more useful for the Germans to destroy the troops on the Normandy beaches with a single bomb"
An alternate-history/science fiction novel (Warchild) by one of our group posits just that.

In his alternate post-war NYC, the large housing development know as Stuyvesant Town was instead a building complex for the blinded veterans of the Normandy bombing, nick-named Ike Town. It had ramps instead of stairs, etc.

@GROSSMAN – agreed, in his book GERMAN ARTILLERY of WW2, Ian Hogg does a comparison of the cost of making and moving and protecting the giant rail guns and super calibre mortars. They may have been awesome hammers of the gods – but they tied up a ridiculous amount of resource and in some cases only ever fired a few rounds. But they needed troops and armour to protext the armoured train they were moved by. They needed effective air cover before they could risk moving. Amazing – as in amazingly ridiculous : but as shiney toys they were superb.

Issue 53 of 'Wheels And Tracks' magazine

PDF link

PDF link

If the Germans had fielded the Me-262 in significant numbers, from the Summer of 1943, the cost to the American heavy bombing campaign would have been substantial, if not cost prohibitive.

Several times in 1943, they had to halt their campaign, due to heavy losses, e.g. after both the Schweinfurt raids, since losses were approaching 20% of the bombers sortied. That was unsustainable, and forced them to conduct shallower penetrations over Europe.

Yes, the Americans and British were working on their own jets, but they were rather primitive compared with the Schwalbe.

I doubt the earlier entry of the German jets would have saved the war for them, but would have certainly lengthened it, and made it far more costly to the American bomber crews.

Perhaps the first atomic bombs would have been used on Germany, instead.

The first operation Jet Squadron was RAF.

> Perhaps the first atomic bombs would have been used on Germany, instead.

Reminds me of the Bulge game from Command Magazine, if the Germans did REALLY REALLY well they are assumed to have made it to the ports, split the Allies down the middle, and ended up being the first A-bomb recipient.

Simcoe 2000 is right….. The rest is nice to have….or retromarketing….

If the Germans had fielded the Me-262 in significant numbers, from the Summer of 1943, the cost to the American heavy bombing campaign would have been substantial, if not cost prohibitive.

But then this opens up the whole can of worms of whether the Allied strategic bombing campaign actually shortened the war in any meaningful way; I've seen some pretty good research buy the USAAC itself post-war that shows that the damage to Germany wasn't actually a war-changer. So if the Allies give up on strategic bombing does THAT change the war? Perhaps not.

-Will

Strategic bombing didn't destroy the German ability to build weapons, but it certainly did significantly impact it, especially in the area of ball bearings, and most of all, petrol.

Very late in the war, fuel shortages significantly curtailed the German ability to defend their homeland, and to conduct pilot training sorties.

Also, the strategic bombing campaign tied up a lot of personnel, and heavy guns, which were used to man the flak batteries. Teenagers, and in some cases, even women were used to "man" these weapons.

Every 88mm flak gun used for bomber defense meant one less gun which could be used for anti-tank ops, in most cases.

PLUTO ! Grrrrr, a pet peeve. PLUTO was a colossal failure, yet because there is film of it, and as it seems cool everyone accepts it worked. It never worked right, and only delivered a very small amount of POL- far less than it was worth being made. They dumped it very quickly as worthless.

jgawne

I am very surprised by what you have to say about PLUTO. I, look others, always thought it was a great feat of British engineering See Wikipedia – link

Can you tell us more please.

Regards

Strategic bombing did not break the German will to fight, as the theorists had thought it would in the 1930s, but it do considerable damage to industry, forcing Speer to invest in a whole programme to construct underground factories etc. – so if output was maintained by Germany, it was at a huge cost in extra resources, and in the potential to ramp up output further. There were also the key fact that it tied up pretty much all of the Luftwaffe resources from early 44 onwards, meaning that the allies could ensure air superiority over their ground operations. Given that the Germans took it pretty seriously devoting massive resources to their radar, fighter, night fighter and flak defenses, it undoubtedly took away resources that could have been used to build up German land forces and tactical air forces. There were also specific successes, as noted. Synthetic fuel plants and oil refineries/fields, the Penemunde rocketry research establishment, V2 launching sites etc.

Both the US and UK built up large strategic air forces which enabled them to hit Germany hard before they were ready for the invasion too, and that also provided an important means to ensure that they could negotiate with Stalin on equal terms.

The one element missing is the weapon called "the Soldier". In the mid 70's I work with a Russian immigrant. As brutal as the German soldiers were to the Russian people, he still chose to fall back with them to Germany rather than live under Stalin. His take of the war was simply this, if the German soldiers had treated the Russian people differently, the war in Russia might have gone the other way.

someone posted here in tmp a link to an usaf study about the quality versus numbers in air combat during WWII. they studied the perfomance of a german squadron of ace pilots (lot of them were shot down several times over germany, so a lot of them had over one hundred scores -sorry about my english-) with me262
they stated that quality only could match an adverse ratio of 3:1. over that, quantity trumped over quality

AFAIK PLUTO was in use up until the supply lines were too long for it to be useful and was supplying petrol at a rate of up to 1M gallons per diem in spring 1945.

On PLUTO, it was a ground breaking engineering feat, and from it developed the flexible pipelines that are very much part of offshore oil and gas production today, however operationally it was a failure as it could not be put into service during the Normandy campaign (for which it was designed) because it took so long to secure Cherbourg, and it was designed to be landed at a port facility, hence it only really stated to pump in early 1945, although between March and the end of hostilities it was pumping huge amounts – over a 1 million barrels a day. TOMBOLA, was a second system of shorter ship to shore pipelines which were used during the Normandy campaign with limited success.

So PLUTO was a great innovation, worked great, but could not fulfill its primary task of fuel supply during the Normandy landings for operational reasons – i.e. those pesky Germans held out in Cherbourg too long.

btw, although i agree that it was an industrial war where germany simply couldnt win, i always though that the real wonder weapon (not a war winning weapon, but one that could really delay the war's end), was thw antitank guided rocket.
at least since the point of view of resources allocated to build it versus what it could destroy, specially in a defensive war, it really looked like a wonderful weapon.

link

good PLUTO discussion.

Given that the Germans took it pretty seriously devoting massive resources to their radar, fighter, night fighter and flak defenses, it undoubtedly took away resources that could have been used to build up German land forces and tactical air forces. There were also specific successes, as noted. Synthetic fuel plants and oil refineries/fields, the Penemunde rocketry research establishment, V2 launching sites etc.

The counter argument is of course that the allies poured massive amounts of resources into it too and was the effort worth it or could those resources been better used elsewhere – like building better tanks for example. The British suffered with very unreliable tank engines for much of the war, because all the engine developement work went to aircraft engines. Given that it didn't stop German production – in fact in went up for all weapons I think it is a finely balanced call on the value of the bombing campaign.

The most likely wonder weapon that could have been a game changer for the Germans was the Type XXI U boat. Had something like that been ready in '42 they might well have won the battle of the Atlantic. That means potentially a UK starved into submission, no US build up, no second front, no lend lease for Russia, etc.

Germany definitely lost the war 11 December 1941.

Once they declared war on the worlds largest empire, the worlds largest country, and the worlds largest economy they were never going to win. The Soviet Union were the anvil on which the US and UK would hammer Germany on. Churchill was recruiting his 'curvy thinkers' to beat (repeatedly) the 'straight thinking' Germans. US industry was untroubled by air-raids, and Stalin was not only prepared to throw millions of men at the East, but actually had the men to do it.

The Reich couldn't do anything the Allies (especially the western ones) couldn't. In France they were facing what were basically mechanised armies, with access to supplies from all over the world. Germany was cut off, and never the uber-army some (I'm looking at you gamers and re-enactors) would have you believe.

Fred,

Yep good point, although the allies had more resources to burn than the Germans. Better tank engines… Hmmm. The early Nuffield built Libertys were unreliable (as used in the Crusader), but once the Meteor was introduced that problem was solved. Also the Valentines got reliable diesels. Was not the Meteor based on the Merlin aircraft engine? (and Merlin derivatives were used to power MTBs too). The Churchill was underpowered, but that was because it was designed for an outdated doctrine, not because a better engine was not available.

The problem with British tanks was rather similar to the US or Soviet conundrum with tanks, keep making lots of what you are tooled up for versus halting production to bring something better into service. The Germans did that, and had a qualitative advantage, but production suffered. The Comet could have been in service earlier.

The same conundrum on the Type XXI. Carry on mass producing type VIIs, or slow down production to re tool for a new sub? In fact it was only after allied victory in the Atlantic that German designers turned to new designs and technologies to try and deal with the allied ability to destroy type VIIs pretty much anywhere. Although they had lots of type XXIs on the stocks in '45, by then they had nowhere much to sail them from…

The one thing that strategic bombing accomplished was cutting into Germany's fuel production. On a semi-strategic level it isolated the Normandy battlefield by downing bridges and cutting rail lines. But a lot of it was wasted effort, except to the extent that it tied up Luftwaffe resources (planes and flak and manpower) that could have been used elsewhere.

As for the A-bomb, 1 or 2 in Allied hands would probably not have ended the war in Europe, unless one of them took out Hitler. If Germany had 1 or 2 in '44 and dropped them on the British ports (or, after D-Day, on the Normandy beaches) that certainly would have put an end to Operation Overlord. Dropping 1 on Moscow might have causes many problems for the Soviets (especially if Stalin was killed) but reaching Moscow with a German bomber would not have been easy.

"if the German soldiers had treated the Russian people differently, the war in Russia might have gone the other way."

That is to say, if the Nazis had stopped being Nazis. Of course, if they stopped sooner there wouldn't have been a war in the first place.

vtsaogames…. Haha…. nail on head.

I once wrote a history essay in my very long lost university days saying much the same thing. The only way the Nazis could have won was by not being Nazis… And if they were not Nazis then their would not have been a war to win… errrrm..

Hurrah, the sanity of this thread is restoring my faith in both TMP and humanity after the madness of the lets invade Russia in 1945.

As above, the toys don't really make much difference in mass industrial warfare unless there is a truly gross disparity. Organisation, operational application, production and strategic depth are what matter.

One slightly random thought I had was that until the advent of the empty battlefield, the primary determinant of battlefield superiority was the ability of soldiers to stand close together. This is true whether it is Romans vs Gauls or our chaps at Omdurman or Isandlwhana (when they signally failed to do it).

Standing close together let the west conquer the world.

Sorry, I've been drinking again.

One random thought – what would the beam on a Canal Defence Light do to an IR receiver? 13 million candlepower might burn out the reciever (not to mention the operators eyes..)
link

The allies had whole brigades of the things sitting around…..

"And yet the atomic bomb *did* prove to be a game changer. All the sudden, Japan agreed it was time to make this stop. The weekend before, they showed no such intention."

Russia hadn't declared war on Japan then. TheComrades were quite happy to do another Berlin on the Japanese home islands, and the Japs knew it. Sanity fortunately prevailed.

"The moral is to the physical as three is to one". Its not just technology. Its the soft factors, including training, morale, command. Isandlwanah had the technology, and some of the best fighting men in the world – in fact a further battle on the same day totally crushed a similar native army near the coast. But Isandlwanah also had inexperienced and ineffective command on the day. The Brits were slain due to rookie mistakes in the face of an experienced, well led and well trained enemy. Not due to the latest mark XXIII assegai……

For me, THE thing that saved WW2 for all of Europe was the Battle of Britain. It did need Spitfire and Hurricane technology, but useless without "the few" and all that made them possible. With UK still in the fray, in 1942 the raid on Vermork delayed the German nuclear programme sufficiently to keep the A bomb out of german hands for the rest of the war. A raid ABOUT technology, but not using technology.

So its all complicated and intertwined. Technology was imortant, but not JUST technology.

One must also not forget that the redcoats at Isandlwana were outnumbered by about 20:1, and the Zulus had several thousand firearms of their own.
There were some very basic errors made by the British commanders, and there are some odds that even the latest technology cannot be expected to off-set if not properly used. Or, I suppose, even if it is properly used.

Wasn't radar pretty important in BoB and anti sub warfare?

I would suggest that a big reason that few weapons prove to be 'a real war winner' is that technological advances are generally evolutionary, rather than massive leaps forward: a Meteor was better than a Spitfire, but not ten times better, for example. A M4 was better than an M3, but not so enormously better that it was a gamer changer. A bolt action, magazine Lee Metford would seem to be a huge leap forward from a single action Martini Henry, but a unit armed with single shot rifles can still hold their own against magazine rifle armed troops – witness the Imperial Light Horse in the opening battles of the Boer War.

Uh-huh, and the Romans won all their wars because they had the gladius and pilum.

AONeill – yes, along with the associated command & control mechanisms to use them to their best effect. What tends to get forgotten about eg for the Battle of Britain is that the Spitfires & Hurricanes needed someone to find their targets (Radar) & then to direct them onto them (the Controllers). The C & C mechanism acted as a force multiplier maximising the advantages that the RAF had.