Could Germany have ever won WWII?

[Swank]

Yes, and anyway if Hitler had wanted to bomb New York he could have used Focke-Wulf Condor airliners like this one that flew the Atlantic and landed at Floyd Bennett field in NY before the war.
Admittedly a Condor bomber version wouldn't have had the range to fly back to Europe after dropping its bombs and the crew would have had to bail out to be picked up by a U-boat, but at least Adolf would have scored a propaganda victory by bragging "I bombed New York"..

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Unless they would have all been shot down flying unescorted across an ocean to a country with radar.

Maybe he could have mailed the bombs to NY?

 

[Eyeball]

Unless they would have all been shot down flying unescorted across an ocean to a country with radar.

Maybe he could have mailed the bombs to NY?

There was a saying in many air forces before the war- "The bomber will always get through" and that was certainly true if there were more than one in the fleet, and if they flew at night and there were clouds around.
Sure, radar and night fighters would have detected them but interception would still have been difficult as pilots never had night vision goggles in WW2, so at least one Condor would very probably have got through to NY.
Anyway an easier way would have been for nazi agents to come ashore in rubber dinghies from U-boats at night to plant bombs with time fuses before paddling back to the sub.
In fact they tried something like that but messed up-

Operation Pastorius - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[paranoid marvin]

Bombers would have been of no use against the US, but V rockets would have been, especially if packed with naatier stuff than high explosives. Not the V1 or V3, perhaps not even the V3 or V4. But by the time they had develop rockets capable of intercontinental travel, and of sufficient size to carry bigger payloads, they would have been a much greater threat.

By the time such 'wonder weapons' were required, the war was already lost. But despite that, the Nazis and their scientists were desperate to show Hitler and the German people something viscrral. That couldn't be nuclear development, which was still a long way from completion, but they could quickly produce bigger and better tanks and aircraft and of course the V rockets.

None of which was going to win them the war, but would give the German people the hope and will to fight on. If there was anything that the Nazis were really good at, it was propoganda, and even with the Russains on the outskirts of Berlin, many Germans still believed in final victory.

As I mentioned before, I think that what really did for Germany was the lack of decent long range bombers. The British had Wellingtons, Lancasters and Stirlings (amongst others), the Americans had their Boeing 'flying fortresses', whilst the Germans only really had the Ju 88 for much of the time.

What also severley hampered them was not moving onto a war footing manufacture-wise. But that was a concious decision, with sound reasoning, and simply wasn't needed until 3 years into the war. With hindsight, if they had been going at full throttle with industry churning out tanks, bombers and U-boats the war would have been won by 1942. Then again, if the US had stationed troops in Europe in 1939, it may never have begun. Everyone can have 20-20 vision with hindsight.

 

[Swank]

There was a saying in many air forces before the war- "The bomber will always get through" and that was certainly true if there were more than one in the fleet, and if they flew at night and there were clouds around.
Sure, radar and night fighters would have detected them but interception would still have been difficult as pilots never had night vision goggles in WW2, so at least one Condor would very probably have got through to NY.
Anyway an easier way would have been for nazi agents to come ashore in rubber dinghies from U-boats at night to plant bombs with time fuses before paddling back to the sub.
In fact they tried something like that but messed up-

Operation Pastorius - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

How are they going to navigate a thousand mile ocean crossing to arrive in bad weather at night? The Atlantic isn't the English Channel.

 

[CupofJoe]

How are they going to navigate a thousand mile ocean crossing to arrive in bad weather at night? The Atlantic isn't the English Channel.

US radio stations might help... if it was a surprise attack.

 

[Eyeball]

How are they going to navigate a thousand mile ocean crossing to arrive in bad weather at night? The Atlantic isn't the English Channel.

They'd wait for a good weather forecast before taking off and steer on a compass heading to NY, the city would be all lit up and would be easy to spot.
RAF bombers hit German cities at night regularly even though they had their lights out, same as when German bombers hit Brit cities.
"The target marker flares looked quite pretty as they floated slowly down in the night sky" my mother told me about the big German raid on her home city of Leicester in Nov 1940 when she was 18.

 

[Swank]

They'd wait for a good weather forecast before taking off and steer on a compass heading to NY, the city would be all lit up and would be easy to spot.
RAF bombers hit German cities at night regularly even though they had their lights out, same as when German bombers hit Brit cities.
"The target marker flares looked quite pretty as they floated slowly down in the night sky" my mother told me about the big German raid on her home city of Leicester in Nov 1940 when she was 18.

You said night and clouds.

 

[Eyeball]

You said night and clouds

If the clouds were fluffy types with gaps between them, brightly-lit NY would be spotted through a gap, and if there was a solid layer of stratus, the bombers would descend below it to spot the city.
In Europe, bombers could also fly along radio beams which criss-crossed over the blacked-out target cities.

 

[Eyeball]

US radio stations might help... if it was a surprise attack.

Yes, in the film 'Tora Tora Tora' a Japanese radio operator in a plane in the incoming Pearl Harbor air raid picked up the sound of Hawaiian music which told them they were on track..

 

[Swank]

If the clouds were fluffy types with gaps between them, brightly-lit NY would be spotted through a gap, and if there was a solid layer of stratus, the bombers would descend below it to spot the city.
In Europe, bombers could also fly along radio beams which criss-crossed over the blacked-out target cities.

I'm a pilot. Nope on your ideas.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Germany struggled fighting the RAF, and they were just across the Channel. How would they fare against an opponent that was a 12,000km round trip away?

The casualties from RAF and US bombing over Berlin were tertible, and the method of bombing an enemy's towns and cities required continuous bombing runs. Also the Germans had nowhere to go, the US could simply move manufacturing further West, giving Germany no chance of attacking it.

 

[pogopossum]

I read through about four pages of the above commentary much of which assumed that Germany with Hitler could have corrected one or more mistakes,
The basic mistake was involving the other two greatest powers in the war, particularly before the victory in continental Europe had been consolidated.
Hitler or the generals may have thought that war with Russia was inevitable. I am not so sure. Conflict and certainly Cold War was inevitable, but Stalin was oddly enough conservative in what he chose to attack/fight. If he had attacked it would have been later after he had consolidated his military leadership, factory base and after he had milked Poland and southwestern Europe as much as he could. If Germany had thrown him a few more bones of weak Balkan countries it would have delayed conflict even further. Hitler was ideological in his hate for Bolshevism, His generals who were not absolute sycophants were not able to restrain his stupidities.
Roosevelt clearly wanted to enter the war. Without overt hostilities he was doing everything he could to bail out England. By all accounts he was happy after Pearl Harbor that Germany declared war as there was strong sentiment in Congress and elsewhere to finish off Japan first, Hitler solved that problem. Again, without actual war it is possible that Germany could have gotten stronger. As in England there were active fascists' in the US and also America firsters. By declaring war Hitler made them inconsequential. People forget that with all of the power of the New Deal, the US was still in extreme depression. WWII was the turning point. Roosevelt was not invulnerable politically.

In spite of commentary in many earlier posts , England was not impregnable. Certainly not as a solo major power. A few more failures without US support and British Quislings could have come out of the woodwork. Hitler was overt in his opinion that England was an "Aryan" nation and could be an ally.

What Ifs are interesting, but it is not relatively minor mistakes that determine history, One big bomb wiping out the Nazi hierarchy and things could have been different,

 

[KGeo777]

Nazi Germany was essentially a parasite economy which In order for it to survive , they had to keep on conquering or collapse .

But is that true? From what I have read, Wiemar was really bad--terrible inflation. Poverty etc. Somehow Hitler's government turned that around and made enemies doing it. If he was borrowing money, one would think the money-lenders would be happily rubbing their hands to collect after an Axis victory.

The Soviet system had to absorb other societies to keep going but eventually it also collapsed.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I read through about four pages of the above commentary much of which assumed that Germany with Hitler could have corrected one or

more mistakes,
The basic mistake was involving the other two greatest powers in the war, particularly before the victory in continental Europe had been consolidated.
Hitler or the generals may have thought that war with Russia was inevitable. I am not so sure. Conflict and certainly Cold War was inevitable, but Stalin was oddly enough conservative in what he chose to attack/fight. If he had attacked it would have been later after he had consolidated his military leadership, factory base and after he had milked Poland and southwestern Europe as much as he could. If Germany had thrown him a few more bones of weak Balkan countries it would have delayed conflict even further. Hitler was ideological in his hate for Bolshevism, His generals who were not absolute sycophants were not able to restrain his stupidities.
Roosevelt clearly wanted to enter the war. Without overt hostilities he was doing everything he could to bail out England. By all accounts he was happy after Pearl Harbor that Germany declared war as there was strong sentiment in Congress and elsewhere to finish off Japan first, Hitler solved that problem. Again, without actual war it is possible that Germany could have gotten stronger. As in England there were active fascists' in the US and also America firsters. By declaring war Hitler made them inconsequential. People forget that with all of the power of the New Deal, the US was still in extreme depression. WWII was the turning point. Roosevelt was not invulnerable politically.

In spite of commentary in many earlier posts , England was not impregnable. Certainly not as a solo major power. A few more failures without US support and British Quislings could have come out of the woodwork. Hitler was overt in his opinion that England was an "Aryan" nation and could be an ally.

What Ifs are interesting, but it is not relatively minor mistakes that determine history, One big bomb wiping out the Nazi hierarchy and things could have been different,

Hitler knew that sooner or later there would be war with Russia. War that would likely be started by Germany, but war nevertheless. In 1941, Russia was at its weakest point. Stalin had purged the army, Germany had a fully mobilised army, navy and airforce, and thevelement of surprise would be on the Nazis side. There was never going to be a better time to attack, so Hitler did.

War with the US on the other hand was madness. Germany had been sinking US shipping for some time with no real payback, and - after Pearl Harbour - the US involvement in war with Japan was certain.

Why he declared war on a country with the largest manufacturing capability in the world. With a country that had one of the largest army, navy and airforce in the world. With a country that was prepared to turn its eyes East and not declare war on them. Most importantly, a country who they had no chance whatsoever of defeating. Is a mystery. This was the point at which the Wehermacht, the German people and even tje Nazi party itself should have turned to Hitler and said 'nein' and deposed him.

Utter madness. But at this stage, Europe's borders should have been barricaded against any attempt at invasion from the US or Britain. So perhaps Hitler thought himself invulnerable.

 

[paranoid marvin]

But is that true? From what I have read, Wiemar was really bad--terrible inflation. Poverty etc. Somehow Hitler's government turned that around and made enemies doing it. If he was borrowing money, one would think the money-lenders would be happily rubbing their hands to collect after an Axis victory.

The Soviet system had to absorb other societies to keep going but eventually it also collapsed.

Agreed. And who was going to be courageous enough to go to Hitler and demand repayment of a debt?

 

[KGeo777]

Agreed. And who was going to be courageous enough to go to Hitler and demand repayment of a debt?

 

[Eyeball]

I'm a pilot. Nope on your ideas.

They're not my ideas, they're well-known aviation facts..

 

[Eyeball]

..the German people and even the Nazi party itself should have turned to Hitler and said 'nein' and deposed him..

An old German boy in a TV documentary long after the war was asked- "As German cities were being systematically bombed to rubble, why didn't the German people rise up against Hitler?" and he replied "Because we were more scared of the nazis than bombs"

 

[Swank]

They're not my ideas, they're well-known aviation facts..

It is a well known aviation fact that navigation radio beams don't go over the horizon. Etc. Not playing instructor.

 

[Eyeball]

It is a well known aviation fact that navigation radio beams don't go over the horizon. Etc. Not playing instructor.

If you're talking about nazi transatlantic bombers, they wouldn't need beams because NY and other east coast cities would be lit up like christmas trees and easy to find.
In Europe where the curvature of the earth is not too important, beams were often used by intersecting over the target city, and a beeper on the bombers instrument panel at the intersection point let the pilots know when to release their bombs.