How Could the Axis Won the War ?

Titan tanks

if they played OKW !

lol best comment so far

Dunkirk is irrelevant; Britain only deployed a token air force to the continent, so even if it had been entirely wiped out it would have made little difference. I've already discussed the Battle of Britain above; all I'll say here is that German fighters didn't have the range to even fly over the whole of the isles, let alone establish air superiority. I consider the suggestion laughable.

Dunkirk was irrelevant to any outcome other than the British agreeing to a truce, yeah. I'd started out discussing that possibility but then cut it out but didn't remove reference to Dunkirk.

What "modern thinking" are you referring to when you say they had no chance of winning a battle for air supremacy? OKL clearly changed its priorities several times during the BoB. Historians have disagreed on the cause (initially thinking it was retaliation for the bombing of Berlin when it probably wasn't), but I haven't heard any say that it made no difference on the outcome.

This is a surprise to me; I've hear of no such thing. The effectiveness of aircraft against naval targets was only really recognised after the Battle of Taranto, which was after the BoB was decided. Moreover, aircraft are in general vastly inferior to submarines for interdiction purposes; submarines can hunt undetected for months, far from any identifiable base.

It was clear much earlier during the battle over Norway that aircraft had a role in naval warfare. Most ships on both sides were lost to bombing rather than in ship-to-ship action.

Yes subs can remain undetected, but they usually just sit in a shipping lane and wait. Aircraft had the substantial advantage of active reconnaissance, and I'd argue in terms of raw tonnage destroyed are superior to subs. Yes they can be intercepted, but my premise was that the British airforce was knocked out.

For example, in 6 months of 1941 (since admittedly subs can operate year round while aircraft cannot) the Luftwaffe, shrunk from the BoB and with the vast majority of their forces on the eastern front, accounted for 811,000 tons sunk. The Uboats sank 2,172,000 tons over the entire year. Although again I have to point out that OKL deprived those Uboats of any aerial reconnaissance, so if they'd actually cooperated the Uboat total would have been higher as well.

Well, I guess that's true, but I think only getting full Spanish entry into the war would have helped. The British demonstrably carried out several landings against fortified points in Europe and the Med; there is every reason to believe that the importance of Gibraltar would have forced them to do it there.

Most of those landings were failures and contributed to the "late" start of Husky and Overlord.

Which was a course of action Rommel himself had advised against, until and unless Malta could be taken. Which it was not.

It took some daring supply convoys to relieve it, if Gibraltar had been taken so would have Malta.

This would have been directly contrary to the Japanese war plan, which knew full well that their only hope was to smash the Americans so badly and so quickly that they could force a settlement; detaching forces to pick fights that did not contribute to this goal would never have been considered.

True, but the issue was the total lack of communication and in fact high degree of miscommunication between Berlin and Tokyo. If that's corrected, those war plans would change at least to some degree. I disagree that their "only hope" was a blitz against the USA. As slim as the chances of Germany knocking out Britain, the chances of Japan knocking out the USA were much slimmer.

I'm not saying all this is likely mind you, but I have to point out these possibilities if someone says there was "no way" something could happen. There were many times and places where the outcome of the war turned, for and against both sides.

They DID go for aerial supremacy, in the Battle of Britain, and lost. And as I pointed out above, modern thinking is they had no chance of winning. They did bomb ports and industry, or tried to, and they certainly dropped mines. But the British were quite capable of dealing with these things.

The battle of Britain refers to a single battle not the overall war. And i agree that it was impossible for the germans to win. my scenario involves that germ nay keeps attacking the brits instead of focusing their attention on the soviet union.

With nearly 6 times more industrial assets and secured supply lanes the axis powers where in a far better position. that they choose not to peruse is considered a huge blunder

Losing Egypt, and I presume you allude to the Suez canal, would have made life more difficult, but far from impossible. Plenty of shipping even today goes the long route around the South African Cape, for precisely which reason U-boats operated in those waters too. It would not have cute the Empire in half; it would have simply lengthened supply lines.

Which is a rather huge victory on its own. the route from India past SA is 4 times longer.
That means the 4 times less resources and re-enforcements

And those armies you want to transport to Africa, and the oil you want to ship back? They have to go by sea, across the Mediterranean. The only reason that British did not deploy in the Med in any great strength is because they were instead blockading the German surface fleet in the Baltic. If Germany had genuinely managed to cause significant trouble in North Africa, the British could easily have shut it down and blockaded the Italian coast. This would have let the Tirpitz etc. out, which would have been bad, but not as bad the alternative. On top of this, whatever forces had shipped to North Africa would now be trapped.

Bollocks. The reason why brits never utilised their fleet was because they had to blockade Tunis in that event. That would mean that the Luftwaffe in Sicily would have a field day because the RAF had no airport that could support the RN. Or did you forgot that Rommel nearly kicked the brits out of NA?

Britain had plenty of experience being a naval empire. It has a historically small army precisely because it could afford to fight small, localised engagements in areas that can only be reached by sea. This also entails knowing you can't necessarily win every fight, but that you can dominate in the long run.

Wtf does this even mean ? do you mean the Brits got their teeth kicked in until the Americans arrived?

I'm well aware of it. I've mentioned myself that declaring war on the US was an act of hubris because every day that Germany could avoid bringing the US into the war was to their benefit. But every anti-war movement struggles when civilians are being killed, and that is precisely what unrestricted sub war was specifically going to do.

This is an opinion and it could have gone either way.

War is a means of politics, nothing more or less. Winning WW2 meant winning it politically. The Allies won the politics, plain and simple. The Axis underappreciated the politics of the war. Once the Germans invade the Soviet Union, they're doomed sans miracles. There are fantasy scenarios sure, like going for Moscow right away. Would it have worked? Probably. And the Soviets would have a million extra men and the resources of middle/eastern Ukraine. Overall, the strategic situation probably isn't all that better or worse for both sides, militarily. Politically, it's a boon for the Germans but not the knockout fantasy would have you think. The Russians lost Moscow once before. On one hand, the railroad hub of Moscow is now cut. On the otherhand, the Germans have a VERY long frontline to cover and are facing a massive counterattack from Far Eastern forces AND Ukraine sector forces.


Let's say the Japanese don't bomb Pearl Harbor. Okay, politically this is a better move but now they're starved of oil. If they just invade the Dutch East Indies, well, they're in a similar boat (haha) except the USN has their battleship line intact. And even if the Japanese caught the USN carriers in port, by 43 the Essex carriers would have naval parity, by 44 superiority, and by 45 supremacy. The war drags, sure, but nothing more.

Sea Lion wasn't going to work. There's more to invasions than landing armies. Logistics are needed and the Germans lacked those. Also, destroying/crippling the entire British fleet, even if you have air superiority, is, well, good luck with that because the Kriegsmarine was so small.

So how do the Axis "win"? They don't escalate the bloody conflict beyond their means!!! The Japanese negotiate with the Americans to end the oil embargo and they end the war in China with some concessions. The Germans, after blitzing France, settle into a 2nd Sitzkrieg that devolves into a Korean style ceasefire. (Whether the German economy could handle not conquering nations for their wealth and resources is another story though. Herr Hitler may have been fucked politically from the start).

The war would have looked very different if some key decisions were made:

1) annihilation of British expeditionary force at Dunkirk in 1940; it was an utter miracle they survived. Give the finger to Goering.
2) Paid attention to the importance of radar during the battle of Britain in 1940; focus radar stations, not later on the civilian population.
3) Not attacking the Russians in opening a war on two fronts. German statesman Otto von Bismarck said his no.1 rule: don't fuck with the Russians. Germany as a country is hemmed in by neighbouring countries; they fought on two fronts in WWI as well.
4) Hitler agreeing to rush toward Moscow in 1941.
5) Japanese destruction of the US carrier fleet, which were absent on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbour December 7 1941.
6) Germany focus on high-quantity tank production rather than quality cf. Soviet and US mass manufacturing doctrine. Like in CoH2 if you stall for a KT, you're probably gonna get rekt by tank swarm later on.

I will give you credit for at least not adding to the list the invasion of the UK and not interfering with Hitlers' not interfering with his Generals.

1) While this was probably possible with what we know today, what saved the BEF back then where the circumstances of poor intelligence and supply issues on the part of the Germans. It was NOT because Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to hold off. The loss of 300,000 troops would have have been devastating but not defeating. Great Britain was still a world power with 10s of million in population on the isles alone. Just as the loss of millions by the the Soviets and of 100,000s by the Germans didn't end their effective ability to continue military operations so too this would not have meant the end of the British empire.

2) The British were modifying tactics as they went, were outproducing the German planes by 2 to 1, and the chance a pilot survived another day were greater, so the war of attrition that was the battle of Britain was doomed to failure.

3) This is probably the most reasonable option that might lead to success, but ignores that the Russians really were a huge threat and that their military was likely to get better (if not actually good) as time from the purges went on. Certainly there would have been more experience among the junior officers, an even greater reserve of men, and many more of the newer tanks available. But it is also not likely considering how intrinsic the East was to Hitler's plans.

4) I just don't think that would have mattered. If you don't take the time to reduce the substantial Russian forces on your flanks you become more exposed the farther you penetrate. Likewise, you still have the problem of running out of resources (2000 kilometers is a huge distance to supply an exposed offensive, particularly when your supply chain was never designed for it). Finally, they only barely managed to reach the outskirts of Moscow, a city 10 times bigger than Stalingrad and with vastly more resources towards it s defense. Remember that at the time the Germans had stalled they had already lost 60-70% of their combat effectiveness and the Mongolian forces were still being held in reserve.

5) My new favorite term with regards to naval strategy is "naval strategy is build strategy" (thank you Military History Visualized!). You could destroy all three US carriers and that just delays things a little bit (a few months at best?). The US produced over 100 carriers during the war. The British another couple of dozen. Destroying the US carriers would have lost to the US Midway... and little else. Even had they lost Hawaii (unlikely) it would have been easier for the US to retake it than for Japan to hold it, particularly that far out to sea and in the face of the growing numbers of US submarines and carriers.

6) This has been addressed in other threads as well. But I will add that the emphasis on war-fighting material is a classic mistake of people who look at these kinds of things. It doesn't matter if you have the "best" kit... or even if you have ENOUGH of the best kit... particularly if "best" doesn't include "the ability to operated and be kept operational" in the field. It matters if you have a long term war-fighting strategy. The Germans conentrated on the operational arts. (And they were extremely successful at that. Barbarossa achieved everything it set out to do- except politically defeat the Soviets.) But none of their weapons systems were designed with a strategy to win in mind. The US made a decision to continue the Sherman and work on the M-26 until it was ready. This meant better Shermans, and many more of them, despite the distance to the front (measured in months instead of days as with the Germans). But the point is they made their decisions not just on armor, armor penetration, etc. (which they did measure and improve) but by keeping in mind also production, re-supply, transport, repair, etc. What happened in a fight between a Tiger and a Sherman is irrelevant if there are always more Shermans and so few Tigers the Shermans don't ever run into them.

The war would have looked very different if some key decisions were made:

1) annihilation of British expeditionary force at Dunkirk in 1940; it was an utter miracle they survived. Give the finger to Goering.
2) Paid attention to the importance of radar during the battle of Britain in 1940; focus radar stations, not later on the civilian population.
3) Not attacking the Russians in opening a war on two fronts. German statesman Otto von Bismarck said his no.1 rule: don't fuck with the Russians. Germany as a country is hemmed in by neighbouring countries; they fought on two fronts in WWI as well.
4) Hitler agreeing to rush toward Moscow in 1941.
5) Japanese destruction of the US carrier fleet, which were absent on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbour December 7 1941.
6) Germany focus on high-quantity tank production rather than quality cf. Soviet and US mass manufacturing doctrine. Like in CoH2 if you stall for a KT, you're probably gonna get rekt by tank swarm later on.