Was WWII....

[dgk196]

Hello...

Here's a 'simple' question...

Was the outcome of WWII inevitable?


Dennis

[Foreigner]

Define 'outcome'.

For example, do you mean simply which side lost? Do you mean where the final front lines and/or the post-war borders were drawn? DO you mean the amounts of death and devastation?

But, in my opinion in general the war was not a one-shot affair. It was a prolonged slug-fest with so many people and so much resources involved, that ultimately the outcome (however we define it) should reflect the balance of some fundamental forces rather than hinging on a particular person, point in time, geographic position and even a strategic decision (no matter how important it may look). So in that sense I am inclined to think that no amount of 'what-ifs' could change the outcome materially.

[Sgt Jasper]

Define 'outcome'.


or example, do you mean simply which side lost? Do you mean where the final front lines and/or the post-war borders were drawn? DO you mean the amounts of death and devastation?

But, in my opinion in general the war was not a one-shot affair. It was a prolonged slug-fest with so many people and so much resources involved, that ultimately the outcome (however we define it) should reflect the balance of some fundamental forces rather than hinging on a particular person, point in time, geographic position and even a strategic decision (no matter how important it may look). So in that sense I am inclined to think that no amount of 'what-ifs' could change the outcome materially.

I disagree. There were any number of possible alternate outcomes in terms of winners and losers, and multitudes of things that could have gone differently. For instance, what if Hitler hadn't called off the Panzers at Dunkirk and had launched Sealion. If the Japanese had followed up Pearl Harbor with an invasion of Hawaii, or even just destroyed the fuel tanks. If Rommel had been allowed to post his reserves close to the beaches in France. If the atomic bombs had fizzled. And perhaps even more important than any of that, if the Germans and Japanese had figured out early on that their codes were cracked, come up with better ones and then changed them often. Nothing is ever inevitable, IMO.

[Weasel]

Actually the Japanese needed to destroy both the fuel tanks and the dry docks, this would have put Hawaii out of action for at least 18 months, perhaps 2 years.

I agree the biggest was Ultra, without it Germany would have won the battle of the Atlantic easily, even with the cracked codes in 42 they came incredibly close.

[Sgt Jasper]

Actually the Japanese needed to destroy both the fuel tanks and the dry docks, this would have put Hawaii out of action for at least 18 months, perhaps 2 years.

I agree the biggest was Ultra, without it Germany would have won the battle of the Atlantic easily, even with the cracked codes in 42 they came incredibly close.

Magic was a close second. It won Midway for the U.S. and got Yamamoto shot down.

[PoorOldSpike]

..Was the outcome of WWII inevitable?..

According to Churchill, Germany, Italy and Japan were as good as finished the instant the US joined the war-

"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy.
Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death.
So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder"- Churchill (after Pearl Harbor)
"Before America entered the war I knew we could not win it, but after she entered I knew we could not lose"- Churchill
"The United States is like a giant boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate"- Churchill

[PoorOldSpike]

..Magic was a close second. It won Midway for the U.S. and got Yamamoto shot down.

Yes, the 20mm cannon and four 50-cals in the nose of a P-38 was powerful magic..:)

US wartime poster-



Yamamoto goes down-

[PoorOldSpike]

...I am inclined to think that no amount of 'what-ifs' could change the outcome materially.

Interesting, this 22-minute Twilight Zone episode explores the theme of "What if a time-traveller went back in time to kill Hitler, would history be changed?"
Basically a German-speaking woman is sent back in time to 1889 to get a job as nanny in the Hitler family household with the aim of killing the new-born Adolf, thereby preventing WW2 from happening-

'CRADLE OF DARKNESS' episode- https://youtu.be/yfyfTQzRxog

[Foreigner]

Sgt Jasper, Weasel,

I have to respectfully disagree with your disagreement.

I will be the first to admit that I enjoy alternative history "what-if". The main problem in those, IMO, is that they tend to award the "dice rolls" exclusively to one side, tend to assume not the most logical reaction from the other side (but postulate the one that would support their idea better), and also ignore some real logistical and other resource constraints.

- What if Hitler hadn't called off the Panzers at Dunkirk and had launched Sealion?
Well, one possibility would be for the British and the remaining French troops to surrender en masse. However, I would think it less likely. Seeing as there was nowhere to run, there's quite a good chance they would actually give the Panzers at least a bloody nose. Maybe pull a little Battle of Pharsalus on them, or at least a Pyrrhic victory. After all, Rommel was stopped in North Africa after the British's backs were against the wall. Seeing the British not running away with the tails between their legs, maybe the French would have put up a stiffer resistance, too. Hitler might have won in the end anyway, but at a much greater cost.

Much has been said about the evacuated at Dunkirk forming the core of the rebuilt British army, but I am somewhat skeptical of the claim - they may be experienced, but they were also beaten. One could argue that by providing a stiffer resistance, they would make for a better inspiration and better morale booster for the new recruits.

As for Sealion - Hitler would have to decidedly win the aerial Battle of Britain, then neutralize the Home fleet, then muster enough logistical capability to support an effective invasion effort - I would say this is a series of increasingly improbable events. The only thing that would help him would be a catastrophic breakdown in British morale, which I honestly don't see enough supporting evidence for. The risk-reward trade-off just isn't favorable enough for Germany, especially considering that the main prize was the Lebensraum in the east, and any delay with Britain means there would be more time for Stalin to prepare.

- If the Japanese had followed up Pearl Harbor with an invasion of Hawaii, or even just destroyed the fuel tanks.
For the Japanese the main prize were the resources of Malaya and the Dutch West Indies. Occupying Hawaii would be more of a distraction and a huge resource drain, and the supply line for the occupying forces very vulnerable to interdiction. Absent occupation, the oil tanks and other infrastructure (dry docks, sub pens, etc.) could have been rebuilt with the labor and resources otherwise allocated to raising the sunken and repairing the damaged battleships. Granted, for the US Navy it would have been a much longer schlep without Hawaii as a base, but the main resources in the US mainland would be still intact, and again, short of a major breakdown in American morale, I can see a longer campaign, maybe even the loss of Papua-New Guinea and fighting on the Australian shores, maybe 5 nuclear bombs dropped instead of 2, but I don't see the Japanese holding on to their conquests in the end. After all, even Yamamoto, if memory serves me right, estimated that the Japanese could only run rampant in the Pacific for 18 months, at most.

- If Rommel had been allowed to post his reserves close to the beaches in France.
Well, I would then say they would start taking losses even before the invasion started. In the end, I think the allied superiority would tell. Rommel's reserves might have been able to stop the allies in some places for a long time, or in all places for a short time, but I still don't believe he had the resources to stop them everywhere for good. After all, didn't the Germans attack the Anzio beachhead head on, and still failed to crush it?

-If the atomic bombs had fizzled.
Then we would have to assume that neither Germany nor Japan would have it (as the bombs were the result of incredible resource commitment, not some genius in a basement thinking up a way to make matter go boom). In the end, we are still left with overwhelming Allied superiority in weapons and resources (and the will to use them), and even without an invasion of the main Japanese islands I don't see a reasonable way for them to turn the war around.

As for the better codes, I would argue that at the then level of technology no code would be truly unbreakable if used widely enough for military operations. After all, it took relatively a small time to crack the 4-wheel U-boat Enigma. Sorry if I sound repetitive, but the Allies simply had more than enough resources and the will to apply them to counter any Axis advances (similarly to the short-wave radar race, e.g).

As for the battle of Atlantic, I would recommend the analysis in Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War" - two monster volumes of about 900 pages each. In summary (IIRC) - 95% of transports leaving the west Atlantic shores made it safely to their destination. In all but 2 months of the war, the shipping tonnage available to the Allies increased - even during the "Happy Times". Therein lies the ultimate reason for the U-Boats' failure - all the strategic calculations hinged on the assumption that the Allies would not be able to add tonnage faster than the U-Boats would sink them. And we all know how that turned out.

Even without the broken codes, the U-Boats still had to close with the convoys and escorts, which after some point had radar and HF-DF to help them out, so the toll exacted on shipping would have to be paid in sunk U-Boats. We can argue about the relative effectiveness, but really, how much more effective the U-Boats would have to be to put a dent big enough to even consider the possibility of a victory? They would have to become 4 times more effective to bring the transport losses to 20%, and I am not sure even that would have stopped the convoys.

I am not saying all this to diminish the sacrifice or dispute the need for the effort to win; it's just that the larger the scale, the smaller the overall effect of any single event, person, or chance outcome.

[dgk196]

Hello...

As you can see... by not defining 'outcome' or 'inevitable' the discussion can go off in almost unlimited directions. Its interesting to see what others considered relevant to this premise. Just on the surface, without any significant policy changes by the countries involved, I would have to say that WWII would have ended in an allied victory.

But, if you allow for any number of policy changes, then we are talking a whole different 'thing' altogether.
For example, what if the U.S. had entered the war, along with the other allies, in '39 in response to Germany's aggression, and Japans? Imagine the battle for France in '40 with a significant level of American forces present!

Or imagine Germany going to a full war-time-level of production before '39! Or say, instead of over-manning the conquered territories (France) and not invading England, they instead put more forces into the Mediterranean theater. So, instead of starting out with an Afrika Korps (three divisions) they started with an Armee Afrika (nine divisions, or more) instead!? And an enhanced Luftwaffe presence there too. Instead of a costly invasion of Britain, they beat them in the desert and take over the middle east oilfields!? That would have put an abrupt end to Britain's opposition to the Axis.

What if Hitler had not put the 'one year ban' on new weapons development? What if the Russians had gone through with their plan to start their war against Germany in '40 as they had planned? Many what-ifs to explore, eh?

Dennis