Re: Nazis without Hitler

In article <4799FCEB.5ACAA8D5@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dave Smith <adavid.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hindsight canbe a good thing if applied ahead of time. Never the less,
Germany was winning at the time.

Germany looked to be winning at the time. There were several things
that could easily have gone wrong.

Had Hitler not turned on the Soviet
Union the next year,

Not going to war with the Soviet Union would have meant forfeiting
much of Hitler's war aims, which were to conquer large parts of the
Soviet Union as part of the expansion of the Aryan race. Delaying
going to war with the Soviet Union would have been dangerous, as
the Soviets were increasing their military capabilities fairly
fast.

and then declare war on the US after Pearl Harbor,

The US was already in a shooting war with Germany, and had been
since September 1941. Roosevelt could manipulate this into a
full-scale war pretty much on his own schedule.

he most likely would have been victorious over all of Europe. As it
turned out, he bit off more than he could chew, but that all happened
after 1940.

No, he bit off more than he could chew when he didn't back down
from the British ultimatum. Britain didn't look like a danger
at the time, but Britain was a long-term danger.

If Hitler had avoided fighting the British as much as possible,
he might have been in much better shape. In the invasion of
the Soviet Union, the Luftwaffe was considerably weaker than it
could have been, due to fighting the British. It was the
Battle of the Atlantic that was most important in moving the
US into the war, not Pearl Harbor. Finally, there is the
possibility that Britain might have won the air technology
race decisively, and produced nuclear bombs.

Hitler had no way to force the British to peace, any more than
Napoleon had. He needed to find a way to live with British
hostility, and never really succeeded.


--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
david@xxxxxxxxxxxx | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-

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