Lee494 | 03 May 2019 4:57 p.m. PST |
If the Germans had won The Battle of Britain, or Stalingrad or Kursk would it have changed the ultimate outcome? Or if Japan had won Coral Sea, Midway or Guadalcanal could they have "won". Or as other TMP threads have said was the outcome of the war pretty much preordained? |
Mark 1 | 03 May 2019 5:32 p.m. PST |
I don't believe the outcome was preordained. But I do believe that the leverage for how much would change from one different result shifted as the war progressed. Changing the results of the battle of Leyte Gulf probably has less total impact than changing the results of Midway. I think of it more like where the fulcrum is located on the lever. I think mid-1942 is point for the fulcrum where the highest point of leverage occurs for the Axis. For the Axis, greater leverage than anything that could have happened in the battle of Stalingrad in November 1942 through February 1943 would have been getting even a little more success in the push towards the Caucasus oil fields in September 1942. That was the only reason FOR a fight at Stalingrad. And it had already petered out before that battle began. For the war in the Pacific, I think the greatest Japanese leverage was at Coral Sea. Midway was more decisive, but if Coral Sea had been decisive the leverage would have been substantially greater. Just my viewes. -Mark |
lloydthegamer | 03 May 2019 6:03 p.m. PST |
Battle of the Atlantic, (the longest battle of the war) had it been lost probably no invasion of Europe and much reduced support to Russia. |
robert piepenbrink | 03 May 2019 6:18 p.m. PST |
Mark's right: the later you go in the war--in pretty much any war--the harder it is to change the outcome. And a lot of the things which decided WWII were not battles or campaigns. The Germans can't get the hang of total industrial warfare until much too late, and the Brits, the Soviets and the Americans don't quit when Axis planning says they will. If Churchill and Stalin continue to fight in 1940 and 1941 and if FDR agrees to Europe first and carries the American people with him it's hard to see an Axis victory. MAYBE 1. The Germans take Moscow in 1941. 2. The Japanese win Coral Sea and Midway going away. 3. In 1942 the Germans take and put into service the Caucasus oil fields, and strike at Britain's Mid-eastern fields. 4. The Kriegsmarine wins the Battle of the Atlantic. But even that might not be enough. I'd want two campaigns the Germans never fought: an attempt to take Britain on the bounce in 1940, and a surge into Syria and Iraq in 1941. Bring down Churchill. Taking Moscow works, but only if the Soviets collapse into civil war. OR: Hitler dies in a plane crash in late 1940/early 1941. There is no invasion of Russia, and Goering negotiates a peace treaty with the UK. The Japanese agree to a reduced empire in China and the US lifts the embargo. If you really want to win a war, quit while you're ahead. |
SOB Van Owen | 03 May 2019 7:38 p.m. PST |
It has to be early to make a difference. I won't even give this a name, since it could hardly be called a battle. "What if" the French and British actually took their declarations of war seriously when Germany invaded Poland? What if they had actually launched a large attack, "stabbing Hitler in the back" instead of the Sitzkrieg? There have been rumors that the nervous generals in the High Command would have overthrown Hitler, feeling Germany was not ready for. Just yet. They certainly had no problem with war when they were ready. Would that have happened, had Britain and France actually shown some resolve? |
Dan Cyr | 03 May 2019 8:57 p.m. PST |
The problem with all the ideas suggested is that they, a particular event changing, are dependent on even earlier changes and events. Germany had the wrong air force, where does one start to generate an actual strategic bombing force for them? The German navy was planning to have their Z Plan ready in 1944. Was it even possible to have brought it forward 5 years? What would it have taken to build a submarine navy instead of a deep sea surface navy for Germany? Starting when? Germany could not build the industrial base needed for modern warfare practiced by the US & Britain (think trucks, half-tracks and such). What would have been the lead time to do so? Would the allies have allowed it to happen without responding? Japan never had a chance. Even victory at Midway or Coral Sea would have merely lengthened the war, not changed the end results. Trying to find a moment in time, is totally dependent on what has happened already. Personally I've always thought that Germany lost the war in 1940 when the UK did not surrender. The UK's refusal to go down, holding the line until the US got pushed into the war, made all the difference. Dan |
Lion in the Stars | 03 May 2019 9:58 p.m. PST |
Sarcastically, the Battle of Pearl Harbor decided the war in the Pacific. Less sarcastically?
Well, I'd have to say that in the Pacific, the Battle of Midway going to Japan would definitely have helped. Dunno if it would have prevented Japan's loss overall, though. Japan just did NOT have the industrial capacity to replace ships at the rate the US submarines were sinking them. In Europe?
If the Germans took Moscow (which would just about break the Soviet's ability to reinforce anywhere else simply due to the way the railroads are laid out), and concentrated on the oil fields in the Caucasus, that might have worked. Getting focused on Stalingrad was definitely a losing issue, lost far too many men there and lost track of their pre-war aims in the East (the oil fields!). |
Daniel S | 04 May 2019 12:08 a.m. PST |
Would that have happened, had Britain and France actually shown some resolve? The Germans would have lost the war as they did not have the munitions needed to sustation a prolonged conflict nor the production to make good the shortages in the short time they actually could fight. Even with the large haul of arms & munitions captured from the Czech the Germans had only limited stocks of ammunition on hand when they invaded Poland and during the Polish campaign they expened muntions at a much higher rate than expected. By October the Germans only had ammunition for 1/3 of their divisions and those stores would only last for 14 days. The reserve stockpiles had another 14 days worth of combat but that was the end of it. The Luftwaffe similarly only had bombs for 2-3 weeks worth of fighting. Allied lack of resolve was due to the harsh experience of the previous war which had left the French very unwilling to risk another bloodbath by taking to the offensive first. Keep in mind that allied intelligence was poor and they had no idea about just how badly the Germans were prepared for war with limited supplies, an army that had numerous "hollow" divisions without enough officers, weapons or training and a fortress line that was not as formidable as propaganda made it seem. |
Martin Rapier | 04 May 2019 1:16 a.m. PST |
The outcome of war is never preordained, and do not underestimate the massive population and industrial esources available to the Axis in 1942. The fact that they utterly fumbled their application is another matter… So, just a few. Germany could have lost the Battle of France very easily. Game over. Germany could have defeated Russia in 1941 by concentrating on the Moscow Axis. Germany might have defeat Russia if the Stalingrad Campaign had been successful. That one is a long shot, 30% at best. |
Richard Baber | 04 May 2019 2:15 a.m. PST |
Dunkirk turns into a disaster – NOT a heroic retreat, not only does Britain lose the BEF but a good portion of her navy too……. Britain sues for peace, Hitler wins the war :) I also really think the Axis missed a trick by NOT seizing Malta, which gave the Allies an unsinkable aircraft carrier right across the sea-lanes between Italy and North Africa!! |
Patrick R | 04 May 2019 2:39 a.m. PST |
If the Germans had taken the Minsk-Kiev-Moscow triangle the Soviets would have been unable to continue the fight. Even losing Minsk or Kiev would essentially cripple the Red Army since everything transited through these areas, if the Germans managed to hold even one, they would have won the war. Excuse me ? They did take Minsk and Kiev ? I essentially know diddles about WWII. I have some insight on a few salient points, enough to bust the usual "If Hitler had built more x, or had listened to his generals, or the Russian weather had not been so brutal." Hitler could have had infinite numbers of any tank, plane or ship, it would not have made a difference if there is only so much oil to go so far. Hitler did listen to his generals, even into 1944, but as it became clear they were not winning the war he took it to himself to save the situation, especially since he had noticed that they didn't have access to the same level of information he had and made the wrong assumptions. The Germans did have winter gear, many units had their coats, except conditions dropped so fast that it took everyone by surprise and became much worse than the typical temperatures standard German gear had been designed for. And the extra equipment stayed in the depots because ammo and food was much more important. If you want to cite Moscow as a logistics hub that is the "push here to win war" button, then Minsk and Kiev are maybe not as important, they remain pretty big in the Soviet Logistic system. Yet they both fell to the Germans and the war went on. The German army went into the USSR without a clear idea of how to win, except hoping really hard that the Red Army would simply collapse over a period of some 17 weeks, roughly the time all the hoarded fuel and supplies would hold out. Barbarossa was in terms of troops killed and defeated in combat the biggest campaign in history to that point and at the end of it the Red Army was still standing. If losing somewhere around 5 million men, losing the near entirety of the Ukraine breadbasket, a still substantial amount of industry, two major railway hubs and other huge setbacks, why would taking Moscow automatically win the war ? Is it because the befuddled German generals didn't have a clue as to what to do next and just hoped taking Moscow might push the enemy over the edge ? It may be that Moscow is indeed the nail in the coffin, maybe the leadership implodes and Stalin is removed. My main problem with what if scenarios is that people often are quick to go for their favorite solution and then frame it as something that will then remain in all perpetuity. If the South wins the Civil War, the North won't try again. If Stalin or Churchill are gone, their replacements will most certainly sue for peace and there is never a sense of revanche. Another classic is the US coexisting with nazi Germany, at the most grudgingly trading and interacting. Unlike say the Cold War where every opportunity was taken to try to influence any satellite and peripheral nation in the hope of damming in the other. For the Germans to really do better in WWII they need more and better industry, more oil, steel, rubber and everything else they are already short of. They should not have had a Great War that left them with a deficit in men, they should not have had 15+ years of a reduced army that left 40-50 year old captains and majors in charge. They should have a properly expanded general staff with more than just a core of Prussian Aristocrats aspiring to be field commanders at the expense of everything else. They would need both strategic AND tactical air power rather than "choose one" A battle will not make a difference, probably not even a single campaign. I'm not sure that even if you give them an atomic bomb or three the allies would want to roll over and surrender rather than retaliate and stepping up the game with chemical weapons, firebombing and gassing German cities. A leadership change and uncertainty with a major enemy might contribute, but for all we know the Soviets just keep on going without Stalin, fully aware the Germans are only interested in total extermination, not peaceful coexistance with the risk of a Soviet revanche … Midway might be a major setback, but not a critical change. |
Keith Talent | 04 May 2019 3:25 a.m. PST |
Battle of Britain or battle of Atlantic . Germans win Battle of Britain – they may have got a settlement out of Uk. Germany wins battle of Atlantic. No significant US presence in Europe = no d-day, no strategic bombing = doubtful allied victory |
Fred Cartwright | 04 May 2019 4:01 a.m. PST |
It may be that Moscow is indeed the nail in the coffin, maybe the leadership implodes and Stalin is removed. I think it represents the best chance for a win in the east. An intriguing what if doesn't involve changing a battle outcome, but what happened after. If in June 1940 the Germans don't conclude a separate peace with France, but make an offer to the allies to restore French territory, except Alsace, and give the Norwegians back their country. Extract whatever concessions possible. Naval bases in Norway, capped French armed forces, reparations, favourable trade deals etc. Under these circumstances I think the French would be pushing hard to come to terms and it would be hard for Britain to continue the fight alone, particularly as the allies had agreed a joint negotiating stance. No doubt Britain would rebuild its armed forces and a Cold War scenario develop. With Germany free from threat from the west, at least in the short/medium term and potentially able to access resources from overseas they can concentrate on the east. How would Stalin react to such a situation? Possibility of a preemptive Soviet strike and at the very least an expectation of an attack by the Germans. The main problem with this scenario is it probably needs someone other than Hitler in charge. |
Marc33594 | 04 May 2019 6:46 a.m. PST |
I am having trouble with this whole discussion in that the original question was about which battle could have changed the outcome of WW II and then we proceed to mix battles and campaigns. While Midway and Coral Sea are clearly battles, despite their popular names, the Battle of Britain and Battle of the Atlantic are campaigns (just citing a few examples). And I suppose we need to define exactly what it means to "change the outcome". For example while a total victory at Midway for the Japanese might not change who wins it would have, most likely at least, prolonged the war which is a change in the outcome. Or is the definition of a changed outcome an Axis vs Allied victory? |
Vigilant | 04 May 2019 7:45 a.m. PST |
Battle of the Atlantic had the biggest impact in the west. Without those supplies Britain would have had serious difficulties in staying in the war and there would have been no chance of a 2nd front opening in Europe. |
Lee494 | 04 May 2019 8:16 a.m. PST |
Marc33 etc. To clarify. Which Battle OR Campaign would have enabled Germany or Japan to win the war if they had won it. Battle of the Atlantic is interesting. What if Japan had won Leyte and consequently the Phillipines "campaign"? For my question I'll consider ANY negotiated peace that lets Germany and Japan keep ANY of their gains a win. |
Roderick Robertson | 04 May 2019 8:36 a.m. PST |
Battle of Britain followed by a successful Operation Sealion. By knocking Britain out of the war: Germany faces a one-front war. No British army (Imperial Army, maybe). No place for the US to stage troops, no invasion of North Africa, Italy or Normandy. No bombing of the Ruhr and other Industrial targets. Harder to support the French Resistance. Malta and Gibraltar fall with no support; the Med becomes a Axis pond; Egypt falls, road to India open. |
Lee494 | 04 May 2019 9:01 a.m. PST |
December 1941. Two Battles. Moscow and Pearl Harbor. Germany decisively defeats Russian counterattack. Takes Moscow. Stalin falls USSR dissolves. Faced with massive numbers of troops freed up to fight in North Africa Britain agrees to a negotiated peace to save her position in Mideast. US cannot fight Germany alone and agrees. Pearl Harbor. Japan catches the carriers in Pearl, or Nagumo does his job and finds and sinks them at sea. He launches followup strikes to destroy dry docks, machine shops, sub base and fuel tank farms. Drives US fleet back to west coast. No Coral Sea. No Midway. No Guadalcanal. With England out of the war US agrees to negotiated peace. Far fetched. True. Implausible. Yes. But decisive victories at Moscow and Pearl Harbor MIGHT have changed history. Lee |
donlowry | 04 May 2019 9:21 a.m. PST |
The Luftwaffe similarly only had bombs for 2-3 weeks worth of fighting. Somewhere I read that Goering said, "Hitler keeps asking me how many bombers I have, but he never asks how many bombs I have." As for the original question, the easiest way to not lose a battle is to not fight it. From last chance to best chance: 1. Germany doesn't declare war on the U.S. 2. Japan doesn't attack Pearl Harbor (or any U.S. territory or installation). 3. Germany doesn't attack the U.S.S.R. 4. Germany doesn't attack Poland. I think what it boils down to, assuming there is a war at all, is that Hitler was very fortunate to knock out France in 1940 and run the British off the continent. He should have quit while he was ahead. So, considering that, I'd have to say that the battle he needed to win was (wait for it)…. DUNKIRK! |
kevin Major | 04 May 2019 9:58 a.m. PST |
Germany had the power in 1940 to complete the victory of the battle of Northern France and capture the BEF. With a quarter of a million POWs in German hands the pressure on Churchill to make a deal with Hitler is immense. With no British Empire in the war does the USA come in? With no USA does Russia survive. But if Churchill resists the peace party. Germany has no power beyond what it had in history to subjugated Britain,so the war follows history. What changes history? The battle or the minds of men? |
Andy ONeill | 04 May 2019 10:35 a.m. PST |
Beer hall putsch. Hitler gets shot in the head and Germany gets a different leader. He is not corrupt and believes in the inherent superiority of german organisation and pragmatic engineering. His war is not a war of annihilation. He doesn't put a drug addict in charge of his air force. Doesn't pit one company or person against another And he liberates allies in his war against Stalin. In support of the plucky finns. |
Korvessa | 04 May 2019 11:09 a.m. PST |
It kind of reminds me of the Time Machine plot. It wouldn't have started without Hitler They weren't going to win with him. |
Fred Cartwright | 04 May 2019 5:59 p.m. PST |
It wouldn't have started without Hitler They weren't going to win with him. I think those are assumptions not givens. Without Hitler the war might not have started when it did or how it did, but the pressure is still there. A nationalist leader with a Germany first agenda could lead the country to war. A Putin like figure with a promise to make Germany a world power again would resonate with the Germans if the time. |
Narratio | 04 May 2019 11:47 p.m. PST |
I'd say that you can't pick a battle. You might point at a campaign, like the North Atlantic but really, the war was lost for Germany prior to hostilities starting. Oil & refining capacity to supply the mechanization of warfare. Stockpiled ammo and an industry that could churn out kilotons on demand. Manufacturing industry that could turn out weapons (tanks, aircraft etc) again in hundreds per month, not in tens per month. Can't see any real way for Germany to win the war unless they never attack Russia and can cause the Americans to ignore Europe for a decade or so. |
Gaz0045 | 05 May 2019 1:44 a.m. PST |
Denmark and Norway, the German success and the Allied debacle led directly to the fall of Chamberlain and the rise of Churchill. So the Germans leave Scandinavia neutral, that leaves the Conservative government in control in Britain and the defeat of the Low Countries and France just weeks later would smash what little resolve was left, perhaps Chamberlain's resignation and his replacement by Halifax. Halifax seeks an armistice to preserve Britain and the Empire in the face of the Third Reich, no Churchillian special relationship with the US, accelerates the isolationist movement there, the knock on strengthen the hand of the 'push north' cabal in Tokyo sealing the rate of the Soviet Union in late 1941 under a two front assault from the Tripartite Axis. Or not! |
Herkybird | 05 May 2019 4:29 a.m. PST |
+1 Battle of Britain and Battle of the Atlantic. |
Legion 4 | 05 May 2019 8:41 a.m. PST |
Well I think I know what battles caused the Axis to lose in the long run. Operation Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor … |
Marc the plastics fan | 05 May 2019 12:04 p.m. PST |
El Alamein maybe Stalingrad definitely |
No longer interested | 06 May 2019 2:33 a.m. PST |
Battle of Sedan in 1940. Should the germans had been stopped possibly the allied would have been able to reorganise their lines and avoid the loss of France, changing completely the outcome of ww2. On the diplomatic front, I'll mention another battle: the may 1940 cabinet crisis between Churchill and lord Halifax. Had Halifax pushed forward his idea of a negotiated peace with Germany would have changed the war into something very different. |
Walking Sailor | 06 May 2019 7:22 p.m. PST |
Arras. Hitler was worried that the Panzer Divisions were getting too far ahead. When the British attacked at Arras, he lost his nerve and ordered an operational pause that let the allies retreat to Dunkirk.* In the Pacific, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were fighting for time. They had "awakened a sleeping giant, and filled it with a terrible resolve." There would be no change in the outcome. *The "headmaster" of German's Infantry School commanded Hitler's personal guard during the Polish Campaign. Putting him in the perfect position to wrangle command of one of these new Panzer Divisions (he got the 7th). At Arras the British protected their flank with a line of anti-tank guns. Racing back the Germans ran onto this anti-tank line and were stopped. The main British attack continued into the German artillery positions were it was finally stopped by the 88 mm anti-aircraft guns. The commander of the 7th "Ghost" Panzer Division learned the trick of luring the enemy onto a line of anti-tank guns (a Pak front). And he learned that 88's stop tanks. He later practiced these lessons learned in Afrika. His name was Rommel. |
4th Cuirassier | 15 May 2019 6:16 a.m. PST |
Battle of France, for me. If Germany had been halted there, there's no Battle of the Atlantic and no western desert. And if France, the UK and the Netherlands have not been defeated, the Pacific Campaign doesn't happen. There would, however, have been an acute risk to Germany of a reverse Barbarossa. I.e., that while part of her forces were pinned down holding France, Norway and her western frontier, the USSR invades either Germany directly or – more probably – just annexes the Balkans. At what point after check / stalemate in France in June 1940 does Germany chuck in the towel to preserve her existing position and avert that? I would say roughly July 1940. No weapon system or other advantage coming down the line was going to give Germany a better chance at winning the war in the west in 1941 or 1942 than she had in 1940. But in that same time the French and British would only get stronger. |
Lion in the Stars | 15 May 2019 8:14 a.m. PST |
What if Japan had won Leyte and consequently the Phillipines "campaign"? Largely immaterial (and largely impossible for the Japanese to win, considering there were over 300 ships on the allied side and 67 ships on the Japanese side). US subs would still have prowled the waters, sinking everything they could find. The PI are a little too far from Japan for B29s to reach.
No place for the US to stage troops, no invasion of North Africa, Italy or Normandy.No bombing of the Ruhr and other Industrial targets. The US was building monster bombers so that we could fly from the US and hit targets in Europe. B35 flying wing and B36 Peacemaker. Though you're right that it would have made invading Europe or North Africa very challenging. |
SeattleGamer | 15 May 2019 2:56 p.m. PST |
Germany needed to invade and beat Great Britain. That eliminates a place to build up troops for a future invasion from the allies. Which is why Sea Lion is one of the most interesting "what if" campaigns for me. Very hard for me to pick a different outcome on the Eastern Front that would have changed anything. I've never thought capturing Moscow would have made any difference. The Soviets were not giving up. Germany being more successful at Stalingrad might have helped. But Soviet counter-offensives that encircled and then destroyed German armies would still happen. The cop-out answer is Germany should not have invaded Russia. Having started a land war in Asia, they were destined to lose it. |
4th Cuirassier | 16 May 2019 4:34 a.m. PST |
The required development for Germany to "win" on the eastern front was political, not military – the removal of Stalin. Stalin actually thought this was about to happen at one point. The replacement would then have been either Communist or not. A replacement Communist leader would then either have won the war anyway, or lost it. Losing it, the scenario whose possibility we're considering, might look something like loss of Moscow and Leningrad, retreat behind the Urals ,and then the perpetual guerrilla war Robert Harris hypothesised in Fatherland. There would be a settled and safe-ish German-settled area, beyond which captured territory is subject to constant Russian incursions, counter-attacked by German mobile forces. The Russians would be proxies supplied by the USA; Hitler would be indifferent to the 100,000 casualties a year this entailed, because they're just the weak who are getting killed. Seems plausible. The leader of a whole replacement regime that was non-Communist might have been able to negotiate an armistice. It would likely have been a burdensome one involving disarmament and the permanent cession of large slices of territory. In effect the "General Government" region would have expanded to encompass European Russia. No normal post-war accommodation could have been reached, because even if no longer Communist, the Russians would have been despised for their racial inferiority. The imponderable in all of these scenarios is what the USA as a combatant would have done. The US has never abandoned a war because it was no longer able to reach its opponent to defeat it. With Britain still in the war, it could still have reached Germany. And I rather suspect, given the B29/Trinity example, that if Britain has not been in the war as a European base for the USA, the latter would ultimately have developed some way to nuke Berlin from across the Atlantic. |