LaCroix wrote:I say that the V2 got increased funding after it produced the first working prototypes - that they had perfect timing after the battle for Britain was a mere coincidence. Would they have built a working prototype in, say 1939, they would have used it instead of bombardments. It was a "the time was right" situation. You don't need to be a military genious to find the idea of a bomb flying to the target without a carrier plane and with no defense against a very intriguing one - that's why they started on a big-scale concept model back in 1936...
Yes, but remember that the German war machine was faced with many competing demands on its resources. Building up the necessary establishment of planes, tanks, and ships to confront the Allies' own growing establishment was
not easy. Doing this in peacetime would not necessarily be easier. On the one hand, the Germans don't have to worry about factories being bombed. On the other, Germany was facing very real economic constraints even before the war- supplies of foreign exchange running short, things like that. Delaying the war by five years might have simply provoked an economic crisis in Germany as they ran out of foreign exchange and had to accept shortages of food or strategic metals as the price of keeping the war machine running.
And yes, the Brits would have modern fighters, as well, but the FW190 would be still on par with them, and the Me262 (with non-crappy turbines not made by slave workers) would still run circles around the meteor.
But let's not bicker about who'd kill whom...
I think we should- it's too easy to exaggerate the capabilities of the German wonder weapons while failing to factor in their weaknesses. But you're right, more interesting things are happening.
You made me think about the whole scenario with your evaluation of japan. The war would probalby start on the japanese side...
What? Remember, Japan's decision to wage war in the Pacific against the combined forces of America and Europe had a
lot to do with the fact that Europe was in chaos because of Hitler. Russia could not interfere in the north, the French and Dutch could not interfere in the south- indeed, under German pressure the French more or less cooperated in allowing the Japanese access to their territories in the Pacific theater. Britain could send only a small fraction of her naval strength into the Pacific- small enough to be no real threat to Japanese naval superiority.
So Japan had to contend 'only' with the US Navy and the minor colonial garrisons scattered across Southeast Asia and the Indies. That was a fairly easy war for them to fight and win, at least for the first six months.
If Hitler had sat on his hands for a few more years, Japan would instead face a situation where the US and British could both rush
most of their fleet to the Pacific and drown Japan in ships; even successfully attacking Pearl Harbor wouldn't guarantee them the decisive naval supremacy they needed. They would also face the risk of a powerful Russian army in Siberia making an opportunistic attack from the north.
Indeed, Japan might be far more inclined to play it safe in this situation, or at least less inclined towards lunatic acts of aggressiveness.
In this scenario, at 1939, the germans don't want to start a war until 1944(if at all - I seriously doubt they would, with all the factors we established.).
We have the japanese in china, and the sowjets already nearly on the move to Finland.
Originally, GB&F only didn't declare war on Russia because they didn't want to fight against Germany and Russia. Without an actual war, they would intervene, which means that the Finnish would stay independent without concessions. Stalin would swear bitter revenge and start the reorganisation.
Hmm. I don't know about this. I really don't. I'm not sure it's
wrong, but I'm rather skeptical- again, the role played by the massive distraction of the German invasion of Poland and the war in Western Europe had a huge effect on other countries' decisions about when to wage war.
Hitler signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
explicitly to cover his eastern flank while he dealt with the Western Allies; would he have made such an arrangement with Russia five years before the time he planned to start the war? Would the Russians have trusted the Pact enough to take the risk of being the
first European nation to declare war in 1939, rather than waiting until the French, British, and Germans were heavily preoccupied with mauling each other?
Germany is bound by treaty to keep the peace, but might even help Finland, to improve connections. Hitler was, if anything, an opportunist, and acting as peace activist would suit him well, easing the tension after Munich.
That would be incredibly foolish, because it would make Stalin his enemy- and he knows he must deal with the Western Allies sooner or later. Hitler was not ready to take on Russia until France, at least, was out of the picture. Turning east without clearing the west would be a major gamble for him, and antagonizing Stalin by reneging on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact would totally defeat the purpose of signing the thing in the first place.
Hitler was an opportunist, but in his early stages he did adhere to a policy of keeping his enemies divided and taking them on one at a time, in rough order of their ability to resist him. That was especially true up into and through 1940.
How about the pacific?
Without a war with Germany, would Britain send fleets there earlier? I think so - the reason they didn't intervene in china was that the fleet was bound by the German and Italian navy and the general war in europe. This means there would be an intervention.
Since Amerca was isolationistic back then, and the fight against the Brits/european colonies, the japanese probably wouldn't do pearl harbour.
I am skeptical of this. For one, the US government was far less isolationist than you seem to think: the US was quite concerned about Japanese behavior in China. One of the key factors that led Japan to declare war was that they faced ultimatums from the US (with some British backing). Along the lines of "stop trying to conquer China or we cut off your oil and steel supplies and your war machine dies on the vine." Indeed, an oil embargo had been going for months already when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.
Japan (correctly) viewed the US as a huge threat to its interests in the Pacific. By launching an attack south into the Indies without taking steps against the US, they'd leave themselves incredibly vulnerable to having their overextended fleet (busily duking it out with the Royal Navy's best ships) chopped off by an American move against their communications by way of the Philippines.
They already had a big enemy, Hawaii is too small to start a war while fighting the RN, already. That would change the pacific war drastically, don't you think? How would the RN fare in place of the USN? After all, the eastern fleet was massacred in 1942. Also, Britain lacked capabilities to wage a war like the US did.
The British fleet had in the Far East in 1942 was
tiny- only a handful of capital ships, with maybe one or two modern ones, pitted against the bulk of the Japanese Navy. They lost a big chunk of that fleet against Japan, but it was a weak fleet- short on carriers, short on modern battleships.
Absent the need to keep their Atlantic supply lines open against German submarines and surface raiders, absent the need to keep a powerful modern fleet in the Mediterranean to fight the Italians, and absent the naval losses they suffered against the Germans in 1939-41, the British could have put a much stronger fleet into the Pacific, one considerably more effective at deterring or at least blunting the advance of Japanese forces in that theater.
And the Japanese would know this... while realizing that at the same time, an intact American fleet might jump out at them at any time, while they were entangled with this relatively powerful British force.
Stalin might be tempted to withdraw support for china if they were supported by the Brits. After all, they fought him in Finland. Would he turn and ally with Japan, splitting china?
Stalin had a bad strategic position to exploit gains in China- the parts nearest the USSR are huge tracts of desert and wasteland. The bits of China he might actually want- Manchuria- already belonged to Japan.
You may not know this, but
Japan and the USSR fought a border war in mid-1939, over Manchurian/Mongolian territory. The USSR won, handily, and Japan never tried to take on the Russians again. Stalin would not have been at all likely to consider Japan a useful or trustworthy ally, and the same goes for Japan's feelings toward Russia.
Either way, with Britain bound in the pacific war with Japan, Russia would probably try Finland, again. Facing that expansion, Britain would be forced to help, again, France as well. This might actually lead to a war with Japan and Russia as 'the Axis', and I do think that Hitler would happily jump on that bandwaggon.
In the end, this might result in complete reorganization of known history.
Yes, but I don't think it would come out the way you think. Russia would
not necessarily invade Finland absent a German invasion of Poland and the war in the West; Russia would
not necessarily assume that Britain couldn't successfully prosecute a land war in Finland and a naval war in Southeast Asia at the same time, and so on.
