Board Thread:Timeline Discussions/@comment-7559950-20130911012534/@comment-32656-20130924153854

Even isolationist Americans liked the idea of building up the military - their basic concept was normally that they wanted to not get involved anywhere, and at the same time be strong.

Manhattan not getting done early on like otl just means a bit of a later start, when fighting starts somewhere.

The idea that they would have "not been willing to continue after a time" is ludicrous.

Quite frankly, scholarly opinion on the New Deal is that while it did help, and likely made things easier for many, it had little to to with the recovery. Simple passage of time, and especially the start of WWII were the main factors, there. Really, WWII is unquestionably what ended the Depression, not the New Deal.

Given actions by Japan and Germany, even an anti-war president would have had his hands forced at some point. And no, Germany would not get even that much in a loss. Soviets steamroll them.

Wikipedia, Guns - and the correct article, at that. Russia is not the Soviet Union. That is exactly why your numbers are wrong. Russia was a single member, though the most dominant one, of the Soviet Union. It was without question not the Soviet Union itself.

The SS had many more leaders than just them. And if the date is right, they've got at least one worse than Himmler. The death of those three would do little to stop the conflict with the SS. Really, with those three gone, the civil war would be horrible. Allies would easily get in, and probably be invited to do so by some of the factions.

To wipe out the Soviet population would be just about impossible. Too many of them, and too large a territory. Just about impossible to occupy it, too.

Said it before, saying it again, and will probably say it more: The Soviet Union, while dominated by Russians, did not have just Russians in it. Not even remotely. Russians were just barely over half the population, ffs.

Any plague strong enough to have those effects is going to be unstoppable, and hit the Germans as hard, if not harder.

The Russian Empire split after that Revolution otl. Someone will dominate the aftermath, akin to the Soviets otl, just a question of who. If you actually meant Russia and not the Soviet Union, then yes, everyone is screwed out there. But that is a whole different scenario, and one in which Hitler probably doesn't even get power.

A divided leadership would be irrelevant.

Sorry Viva, but you are just wrong in general.

Most Soviet generals were, in fact, not fools. Really, the proportion was about the same as in the German military. While not as experienced, the Soviet leadership was still trained in the art of war. Just didn't have, mostly, the experience of having had invaded many countries already.

The "better generals" were already there, and in position. They just needed a bit of experience. Which they rapidly gained.

And, for that matter, Stalin screwed with them just as much as Hitler screwed with his own generals.

The idea that the Germans had "almost won" because they were near Moscow is bunk. Moscow is, and was, just a point on a map. A big one? Yes. But one that means winning or losing? Not even remotely. For that matter, there is no such point that means that.

And, for that matter, Stalin did want a war - he just wanted it on his terms, and on his time schedule. Didn't happen, of course, as Hitler's timeframe was sooner, but that was the eventual intention.

As for Stalingrad? The only part of that that fell on Hitler was the decision to not break the troops out at the end, to to go into the city as fast as they did otl. It still needed to be done. Can largely blame the generals for the entire thing but the end.

The idea that India is where they got "most of their supplies from" is bunk. Most British supplies, in fact, came from the Americas.

The Germans had no ability to destroy the RN short of having total air superiority, which is something that was basically impossible to achieve. And even then, the RN just moves out of range, and later moving to strike any invasion force and knocking it flat. The RN suffered almost nothing from the German bombings.

To call the fighting in the Balkans anything other than a minor sideshow, let alone to make the claim that it had any impact on the German ability to bomb the UK, is bull.

"Lights?" It's called a blackout. As in no lights whatsoever. Any lights at all would direct night bombers - not that they did much of that - to the right region, and given the accuracy of those bombers, that is the same as there being none at all.

Germans didn't discover the extent of British radar, ever. Nor would they find it out sooner.

Lend-Lease helped the Brits, but it not happening would not be a death blow by any means. You give the U-Boats far too much credit. And, for that matter, the US profited from the arrangement, so they have no reason not to.

More U-boats don't magically appear. The manpower and resources have to come from somewhere. And even then, the effect is minimal. There's just no way for the Brits to go under because of those things. And by building more, you screw another part of the German military. In other words, more U-boats equals something such as less tanks or artillery - and then the Soviets chew their invasion all to hell.

Britain would not collapse from more of those things. Subs are, and were, fairly easy to deal with, imo. And convoys are very hard to to much damage to.

So Hitler doesn't declare war. Big deal. Not only was the US already fighting an undeclared war at sea with them - something that would have led unquestionably to outright war anyway - but would have entered the war against them shortly after Pearl anyway. You miss that part entirely.

You don't have Britain out of the game, and even if you did somehow get that, the resources it would take would then be unusable against the Soviet Union. Less tanks, artillery, supplies, men, etc. Soviets screw them over still.

Japan can't take India. And you just waved the thousands of miles between there and Europe by hand, too.

You give the Indian nationalists aligned with Japan far, far, far too much credit, lol. Prominent, my foot. They only had any influence in Malaysia, not India.

Again: Not possible for Japan to take over all of China. Too big and too many people.

Don't "win" the war whatsoever.

Had Gandhi died by accident, life would have went on. He would hardly have been the first Indian nationalist to die. You have to remember that Gandhi became far more important in death than in life.

The Army Japan formed was from Indians living outside of India. Not in it, at all. Such a thing isn't happening.

Yes, very impossible for Japan to hold India, let alone do anything else at the same time.

Brits would not have been dumb enough to try and come back like that.

Japanese did not set up a puppet government in Thailand. The Thai government joined the Axis outright. And, in Vietnam, until the last couple months of the war, the Vichy French technically ran the show. Not a "puppet" either.

The occupation of India would not be supported by the Indians, imo. As history even showed, the Japanese were not viewed as liberators by them. And, moreover, some sort of new arrangement was promised during the war to take place after it. Plus, Guns is right about the volunteer force - most troops in that theatre were Indian, imo.

Rd, even just occupying those areas would not really have done it. Still a ton of resistance, would mean troops get permanently stationed there, and the Soviets are still going to counter them, hard and in greater numbers. Be a very long and hard to maintain front line at best. You hit the nail on the head about India, of course.

Yes, Imperial Germany would have had far better odds of beating the Soviets, provided they had Nazi-level technology.

Not even remotely possible, Viva.

Allied shipments to the Soviet Union did help them, but in truth the net total was small in number. You can only ship so much through bad convoy routes and over lengthy overland routes. In truth, most Allied materials that did anything for the Soviets were simple trucks. And those merely made it easier - the Soviet ability to function remains with or without them.

Stalin begged them to do that because it would lessen the troops his armies faced on some level. Who wouldn't want that? Plus, the Allies promised him it. As to the Soviets losing at that point, that is bunk. They were not.

Really, the concept that Stalin "would not have survived the war" without Allied help is totally bogus. There is no truth whatsoever to that statement.

Resistance short-lived? What on earth are you going on about? It would have been quite literally impossible to shut that valve off.

There was never an "uprising" in Norway. And if you somehow meant the Norwegian Campaign, that went on for a lot longer than a couple weeks.

Germany, as others have pointed out, 1947 at best for a nuke. And, quite frankly, that estimate is far too soon. More accurately, you'd get the 1949 the Soviets managed with stolen data from the USA. You also exaggerate the impact it would have, and fail to include that the Germans had nothing that could even remotely carry that thing in the air - they'd have to plant it somewhere and try to make a hole in the front lines. And good luck with that.

US, as pointed out, already involved and the Brits still very much in the game.

The idea that the Soviets were an "agrarian society" is something you vastly overstate, Viva. To the contrary, they were one of the most industrialized nations by that point. Admittedly, concentrated in heavy industry, but it was there. The Soviets moved many, many factories eastwards, on their own, and put them back together, on their own. The Allies had just about nothing to do with it. Again: They were 'already industrialized.

As for the idea that the Germans were close to the bomb, and that the Japanese were helping them, that is quite frankly laughable at best. The Germans were nowhere near that, and the Japanese were at about the point where they were rubbing two sticks together. They had no "nuclear technology" whatsoever, and the Germans didn't try to send them any - nor would Japan have done that if they had been in Germany's place. Japan was not "in on it" in any way, shape, or form.

In addition to that, the Japanese did not have the resources or capacity to even really start a decent nuclear program.

No, Japan was not planning a biological attack. Really, their biological division was nowhere near such a thing.

Japan simply does not have the resources to build trucks, tanks, etc. like that. It's either that or a fleet, and being an island, the fleet was a must. There's a reason why they designed their warplanes to be fast - their designs had just about the smallest amount of metal in them that they could get away with.

Quite frankly, their "war tradition" was about as modern as it could get. Japan had the military setup it had because that is was it could build, supply, and maintain, simply put. Could they have been a mechanized army with tanks? Yes. Would it have been at all usable? No. They had fuel shortages as it was - those expensive wastes of metal would have just sat there.

Both Japan and Germany, especially Germany, did mass produce war materials in great numbers. Just so happened, however, that the US ability to do so, as well as the Soviet ability to do so, were far larger, and the British ability was somewhere in the same ballpark as Germany.

As for an Axis being stronger without Italy... Yes and No. Yes, they would not have had to back them up and pull their puts out of the fire. However, the troops they fought against would also have then been elsewhere, and British operations in many areas would have been entirely secure compared to otl.