re: What if Hitler never invaded the Soviet Union

quote:

---

Wasn't there an issue of oil fields in Russia that Germany needed to supply their war?

---

That was part of it too.

quote:

---

I always thought it was weird that Hitler didn't press the Japanese to invade or at least open up a second front in Russia's east. Then Hitler wouldn't have faced the full brunt of the Soviets.

---

The Japanese had clashed with Russia on the Mongolian border in 1939 and gotten their asses kicked. They wanted no part of a repeat. Japan had a modern Navy and Air Force, but its Army was stuck in WWI, with almost no armored force. Even after Stalin's purge of the officer corps, the Red Army was more than a match for anything Japan could throw at it.

We'd be posting on

du werdest einen krankenschwester brauchen droppings

Yep, Nazi Germany was even more diametrically opposed to communism than the US at any point in the Cold War.

These were 2 super powers of their day, bordering each other, basically, and a fight was gonna be had.

quote:

---

Invading the Soviet Union was not a mistake. The time he invaded was a mistake. Had he done it right after the winter season, Moscow would have fallen.

---

Problem is, after winter season comes mud, which doesn't dry out on the steppes until early summer. Hitler lost several weeks bailing Mussolini's arse out in Yugoslavia, but he couldn't have launched Barbarossa in March.

I would take this question a step further and ask what if Hitler had been successfully overthrown/assassinated by more sane German officials:

peace could have easily been negotiated with Britainnia and the US - with Nazi Germany controlling nearly all of Western Europe. Then Germany could have had a better shot at either negotiating themselves into a Cold War with USSR or outright defeating / stalemating USSR and retaining their Central European possessions

I don't know enough about Japan / Pacific theater to know if peace there would have simultaneously possible or not.

In 41 and 42 Germany had a very tenuous peace with the SU. They were geo-political rivals and the Soviets were clearly late to the game. From the German perspective, the best outcome could have been reached with a fast campaign. Problem was the army was not provisioned for winter and the strategic significance of Stalingrad was overestimated.

Despite popular opinion, Russia is conquerable, but you have to be adequately supplied to do so. Both Napoleon and Hitler made that same mistake.

They were both going to fight, just a matter of when. There was no benefit to letting the Soviet war machine catch up. The main problem was Germany simply squandered their resources.

quote:

---

The time...mistake

---

I'm convinced that if Hitler had not over-reached prematurely - if he had taken care of England and secured the Western Front first, Germany could have pivoted immediately following winter and sent the brunt of his Wehrmacht blitz-krashing into the USSR, fought along that bloody Eastern Front with proper supplies and favorable weather, and pushed Stalin and his Red Army far enough east that he could have taken Moscow in the first year. Whether he would have kept the surprise factor in a later invasion could be debatable, as to whether he could have kept Western EU resistance under wraps during this later Eastern invasion remains an unknown. But at that point, the US would in theory not yet have entered the war, so might not become a major factor in any Nazi/Red fighting. At least not until Pearl Harbor.

quote:

---

Message

---

quote:

---

Both Stalin and Hitler wanted Eastern Europe

---

Yes, that is a given. Just as war between them is a given. The big question is: when does it start? Hitler jumped the gun and got a too-soon start, before England fell. That was costly. But maybe if he had waited, Stalin would have moved to grab Eastern EU first. And then Germany would have been pinched in a very unfavorable place with a very expansive Soviet neighbor. So maybe Germany had some intelligence from inside the Soviets that led to the early start.

quote:

---

We would all have blonde hair, blue eyes, a woman with big breasts, and a black Benz.

---

Sieg heil.