History
Welcome to History!
This community is dedicated to sharing and discussing fascinating historical facts from all periods and regions.
Rules:
NOTE WELL: Personal attacks and insults will not be tolerated. Stick to talking about the historical topic at hand in your comments. Insults and personal attacks will get you an immediate ban for a period of time determined by the moderator who bans you.
-
Post about history. Ask a question about the past, share a link to an article about something historical, or talk about something related to history that interests you. Please encourage discussion whenever possible.
-
No memes. No ads. No promos. No spam.
-
No porn.
-
We like facts and reliable sources here. Don't spread misinformation or try to change the historical record.
view the rest of the comments
But they didn't because it wouldn't have worked.
The battle of Britain was a very close thing and if the Germans had used a slightly different strategy, they could have won. Given that America was not yet in the war and there was an alliance with the Soviet Union, could you explain why the Germans could not have proceeded with operation sealion bearing in mind that the allies did essentially the reverse 4 years later?
Germany didn't have the manpower or the economy for a protracted war. Hence the early reliance on "Blitzkreig" when taking France/Poland/etc...
The moment that first push petered out and it became a slog instead of a blitz, they had already lost. It was just a matter of time.
As someone already mentioned, the Nazi state's entire strategy relied on getting access to Russia's oil reserves before their own ran out. They were on a ticking clock until they could make that happen (which ultimately they didn't).
As for operation Sea Lion giving them British Empire oil, why would you think that taking the island of Britain meant that they automatically take all the colonies of Britain? Conquering an island doesn't mean they get Canada and India (for example). That's not how war works.
Wasn't oil the reason for the North Africa campaign? What if Barbarossa resources went to North Africa instead?
Hitler very much didn't want a third front in the war. If Barbarossa had shifted to North Africa, it would mean fewer troops to deal with the soviets when they inevitably invaded (which Hitler was sure they would do). As it was, North Africa was (at first) an inconvenience to them. Mussolini had invaded North Africa to get his "empire", and when they started taking heavy losses there, it became clear that the Allies could take advantage of it to come up into Europe through Italy and the Mediterranean (which is ultimately what they did). Germany had to deploy Rommel and the Africa Corp. to help the Italians or face fighting a war on three fronts.
In short, Italy was supposed to be Hitler's protection against invasion from the south. But Mussolini was an idiot.
Edited to add: You must remember that at this point in time, North African oil reserves were for the most part undeveloped. As far as Hitler was concerned, it was just a bunch of sand.
Defense requires 4x less troops than offense. Stalin would attack but it would have been years away. The attack wouldn't be to hold Libya but to push through Egypt into Persia which had British Oil.
What was stopping Germany from simply buying oil from Russia?
I'm not a historian, but here goes:
my understanding is that yes, the battle for air superiority over Britain was nearly won by Germany.
However, I don't think Germany was ever close to Naval superiority e.g. the Bismark was sunk within 8 days of its first offensive operation. This was August of 1940, before Britain had won air superiority. Naval superiority is pretty important for landing craft. Oh, in the topic of landing craft how would Germany have actually transported enough troops? Also the geography/topography of southern England is more defendible (cliffs of Dover).
I can't easily find how many Axis troops were being used to defend Europe's Atlantic coast, but it seems that Hitler had imagined using 300,000 as part of his Atlantic Wall, and that the he had fallen short of that. Britain evacuated 338,000 troops from Dunkirk. That number of troops being used defend the cost of southern England is um a lot.
Also, I think you're misrepresenting the alliance with the Soviets. Nazism was inherently anti-communist and Stalin knew that war was a matter of time. By the time the Nazis could have built sufficient landing craft for an invasion Stalin would have finished his purge/reorganization of the Red Army. As soon as those boats got wet the Red Army would have been rolling towards Berlin.
Honestly, I think it would have greatly shortened the war, at the cost of more of Europe being subjected to Soviet domination.