How close were the Nazis to winning?

I tend to agree with this. Without the front against the Russians, many more resources would have been available in the west to fend off any invasion. Along with Hitler's micromanagement and his misjudgements that was probably the biggest nail in the coffin.

As far as Japan was concerned, our expansion further into the Pacific and the Allied powers own racial views stopped Japan from doing what the west had done for quite some time which was the main catalyst for their aggression.

 

Totally wrong when compared to history, but whatever.

 

Sorry, Japan was expanding mercilessly into China just as we did in the West. Read your history on our expansion into the Pacific and what we did to indigenous peoples, not just North American indigenous. We killed men and boys in the Philippines and bragged about it on stage in the US to great applause. The Filipino-American War was decisively won by U.S. imperialism in 1902. Japan was merely doing what the West had done for some time and wanted to be part of the big boy cadre but the West's racial views would not accept them. Wrong color don't you see. Japan's aggression against the US did not happen in a vacuum.

 

Actually, we and the European nations are the ones that gave them that access to China in the first place. First for their assistance in the Boxer Rebellion, then later as their spoils from Germany after the conclusion of the First World War.

And if you bothered to look at history at all, you would know that the Philippine-American War was primarily a fight against attempts to make the Philippines an Islamic Republic.

Specifically, the major opponents were the Republic of Zamboanga, the Moros, and the Sultanate of Sulu. This group was concerned with kicking out all Christians, and forceful conversion of the rest of the islands through either the sword, or expulsion.

That is the danger you have when trying to enter into something with somebody that knows the history of that conflict.

 

Please. You are trying justifying American Imperialism. We had no business in that part of the world except for expansion of power..

 

Why would that war be our concern?

After the Spanish American War, we liberated Cuba- but instead of liberating the Phillippines we chose to take over control ourselves- denied the Philippines independence.

We had no need to fight in the Phillipines, other than to control the territory.

 

What kind of "Imperialism" is it when the US gains lands after a war, then gives them away?

The Philippines were granted semi-independent status less then 40 years after the US gained control of them, and complete and total independence 10 years after that.

Now I know you have no idea what you are talking about.

The Philippines were a mess, and in no way prepared for Independence at that time.

The insurgency with the Moros, Sultanate of Sulu,occupation by multiple pirate bands (mostly from China), invasions and occupations by the UK, there was not even the beginning framework for any kind of realistic government, short of just tossing them aside and watching them tear themselves apart by civil war.

And we fought in the Philippines primarily for the majority of the citizens of those islands, who were Catholic. Remember, these were expansionist Islamic groups who wanted to spread Islam by the sword. Simply brushing off our hands and walking away would have seen decades of fighting between the Catholics and Muslims (which had been happening for decades already).

What good is independence, if the "independent" area is now suffering from fighting by at least 5 differing groups, 3 of which want to slaughter all the others? If you want a good look at what an "Independent Philippines" of that era would have been like, look no further then former Yugoslavia. Except it would have been many times worse.

Cuba on the other hand already had a functioning government framework, and became independent less then 5 years later.

 

I concede you know more on this subject than I do- and will have to read up more about it.

 

I doubt that. The US needed Germany to deploy there troops. That's why the western sectors were united again. Some more war crimes would not have changed that fact. The alternative, to split up Germany and let Stalin control whole Europe east of France was not really attractive for the USA. Even the attempt to split Germany into two separated nations failed 1989.

 

2.6 billion. Isn't that about 3 times what it cost to make the Obamacare website?

 

If you need some hints as to where to look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfsfoFqsFk4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KulM23bEIA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillipine_American_war

Unfortunately certain self proclaimed on this forum "history experts" are rather amateurish.

 

You are missing what I said.

I am not saying that there would not be an occupation, simply that Germany would have undergone a "Balkanization", and been broken up not into 4 occupation zoned, but into a dozen or more separate components. The UK-US-French would not have combined their sectors into "West Germany", but kept them separate so they would never reform "Germany".

Can we stick to the topic without political injections that have nothing to do with the thread?

 

"2.6 billion. Isn't that about 3 times what it cost to make the Obamacare website?"

Given the cost and the time of creating atomic weapons to help in winning a world war versus creating a failed website adds a bit of texture to both.

 

They were no where near completing an atomic bomb, Hitler himself referred to it as "Jew" science. The fact a mad man was leading them doomed them from the start.

 

I never go to Youtube for any historical information. Wiki is a good place to start and look for good references- but the place I will end up going it my local library.

 

One of Nazi Germany's failings was their inability to build weapons and tanks in a manner and level of lower complexity and length of service viability that took into consideration that to build over complex and long time service weapons and tanks could be over come by the United States and Soviet Union building MORE such weapons and tanks that were less complex and durable in a shorter time thus greater numbers of inferior weapons and tanks could overcome less numbers of more complex and durable weapons and tanks the Nazi's put out.

As example a Tiger Tanks transmission gearing was designed basically to last almost forever unlike a Sherman Tank's transmission gearing which was designed to only last several months.

If a Sherman Tank survived a few months it's transmission could be replaced with readily available parts which took only 1/20 the time the German Tanks transmission parts or other parts would take to manufacture.

AboveAlpha

 

I can understand why. It's very rare that I actually find a documentary worth watching.

Wiki is good because you can at least cross reference the material so you know that it's accurate.

Anyway I was just trying to offer a few hints that's all and it's not as if I'm obliging you to use those links and I hope that your research on the subject is fruitful

 

I often source Wiki because it is easier for "the masses" to consume. But ultimately, I use it as a source for sources.

 

That was impossible for some reasons. The US needed the West-German troops, the Bundeswehr, to defend the border. They needed the West-German economy, to pay the occupying US army. They needed streets, houses, electricity, railroads, police, whatever you need to run a nation. Putting some US-outposts in a divided, poor, hostile land, what purpose would that have had? What happened in South Vietnam would have happened in Germany if they had tried this plan. US Troops fighting civilians in the streets of Frankfurt.

Germany is not the Balkan but the key of Western Europe, so "Balkanization" was no option. The Morgenthau-Plan wasn't given up for moral reasons. If you want to have an army in Germany to fight Russia, the possibilities are limited.

 

And once again, you are obsessing over something completely unrelated to what I said.

The Morgenthau Plan was an early plan, from 1944. It proposed breaking up Germany into 3 main sections (North Germany, South Germany, and the International Zone), as well as releasing territory to Poland and France. However, there were issues with it, including the fact that the industrial capabilities would have been essentially stripped, and the new countries would have found it hard to be self-sufficient.

When the Soviets essentially annexed Poland however, the idea was pretty much scrapped. It was realized that any land given to Poland would essentially become Soviet, and that they would try to control North Germany, just as they did with East Germany.

And you are also completely missing the thing I very clearly stated, and that is what likely would have happened if the Germans had conducted widespread chemical warfare. That did not happen, so the drive to permanently destroy Germany as a unified nation was not as strong.

If Germany had uncorked the Chemical Genie yet again, I doubt that anybody would have wanted to give them any chance ever again to reform into a dangerous threat to Europe a third time. For some reason you are completely ignoring the rational for such an extreme resolution, so you are taking what I said completely out of context.

 

Everyone know nazis downfall was basically the failed russian campaign, they wasted a huge amount of resources and manpower in that failed attempt to conquer Russia. It was the same mistake of Napoleon, he tried the same thing and wasted his forces in a failed attempt.

Nazis could have well avoided at all any confrontation with Russia and used their force to conquer all west europe. Russian had huge defensive capabilities due to their vast and cold territory and number of men, but would have been seriously handicapped in a conquest campaign over german well defended territories.

Hitler ferociously insisted on the east campaign, even when his generals suggested to retreat, but nobody deared to disobey. Hitler himself was the downfall of Nazis.

 

I don't know, but I am glad they did not win, and we did not come out too bad for it, we got a lot of their science folks, we may not of even made it too the moon if not for us winning that war

weird how history works, would there be an Israel today if we had not won?

.

 

Different topic, and hard to answer. More then likely it would have continued as it had, with large Jewish settlements living in Palestine, probably becoming a "state within a state", more or less the reverse of what we see today.

 

The poster Mihalpa's post on Hitler's domestic policies unraveling is a generally good synopsis of Hitler having to go to war; he must have read Peukert's books on the Weimar Republic and the followup book on life inside the Reich.

The key mistake was Hitler's declaring war on the U.S., but pretending that didn't happen, his first critical mistake was diverting resources to the Greek uprising and delaying for months launching his offensive on the SU. Rather than launching a major offensive against Moscow so late in the year, he should have just feinted in that direction and focused his main offensive on the southern drive toward the oil fields. Without the Ukraine and the Caucusus oil, the SU would have been both crippled and largely limited to a defensive role. His second mistake was not bypassing Stalingrad and allowing his forces to get bogged down fighting a pointless battle, and ignoring the whole theory behind the blitzkreig.

There was no way he was going to achieve a breakthrough in the center, the Soviet minefields there were far too formidable, but if the Germans were successful in the Southern drive, the threat of a drive from the South behind those minefields coupled with a northern offensive the next spring might have motivated Stalin to sue for terms. A total victory for the Reich wasn't possible, but winning a lot of territory and the Ukraine and some oil fields was very possible. Whether or not the Germans could hold on to these concessions for a long time is another thread in itself, but as far as holding on to the western European gains that wouldn't have been too difficult; the Nazi had a lot of supporters in most of those countries, enough to maintain a decent intelligence police operation.

But, he declared war on the U.S. and gave Roosevelt a fine present that shut down the isolationists and Hitler fans in the U.S. and cut his own throat.

 

I would guess no; the Holocaust was a key motivator for hundreds of thousands of Jews to seek asylum there as well as generating a massive amount of sympathy in the U.S. in support of a Jewish state; a lot of countries in Europe took advantage of the Nazi defeat to unload and dump a massive amount of their own garbage on Germany, but the Nazis wouldn't have been nearly so effective at murdering so many of their 'enemies' without a lot of enthusiastic support from the other countries, particularly the Poles, Ukranians, and other eastern ethnic groups. The Holocaust was a team sport re Europeans.