With more u boats in the war begins and aircraft carriers like japanese in the pacific, and build or buy the Zero aircraft, with his range the england battle could be different.

Also more I+d in Asw /radar,and early snorkels

And dont make some big mistakes

Change the strategy in the england battle
delay in arrive to moscow
lose the whole 6 army in Stalingrad

i still maintain that if Hitler had 300 operational UBoats from Winter 39 the British would have been too scarred to deploy the navy in case of heavy losses

Hitler could have had a stranglehold around Britain - he could have quite literally starved the UK into submission

I think most of you are missing the point. Hitler invaded Russia instead of keeping the pressure on the British, he sent some three million troops into Russia, possibly more, which if sent into Britain would've been the end of the supply route to Europe. If Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany concentrated on Britain like I said earlier, they could attack the US from two sides, the only way to defeat America.

The bottom line is that Germany or Japan alone could not compete with America's industrial complex, 300 type XXI's or no type XXI's. Same goes with Russia, Germany was pretty much bogged down in Stalingrad and was fighting a losing battle, despite taking much ground in Eastern Europe, the supply lines were stretched extremely far. Again, having a Japanese Expeditionary force on the other side of Russia, coming in from the East would've made quite the difference.

All in all, the war of WW2 was won on the ground, in large part. Not to say that this will always be so in future wars, as nuclear submarines can decimate whole countries...

And if you've played Axis and Allies, you know that the Axis cannot win unless Japan starts building a factory in China on her first move.

:rotfl: And if you consider yourself a pro in Starcraft, that's the equivalent of a five star general...

is that how u win?? Psh man i stunk at that game. :nope:

I have never played Starcraft, but here wonderful things about it from folks who do. Especially the unit balancing.

That and Germany needs to get some lucky roles attacking Leningrad.

XXI's early in the war would serve to expediate the development of the USN's homing torpedoes, especially active homers. The bottom line is that for all of their advancements, the XXI was still a submersible torpedo boat, bound to the surface.

I have to go with Drebbel's original statement. As it was Germany was forced to ransack high to mid voltage transmission lines throughout France and other occupied countries for copper just to boost U-Boat production. In the fight for finite resources a land animal like Hitler wasn't about to cut back on tank production and increases in the number of Army divisions to build and man a fleet of 5,000 submarines. Germany's industrial might only went so far.

Frankly, if Hitler could have traveled from 1945 back to 1933 with a couple of blueprints he probably would thrown everthing into early Tiger and Panther tank production and research on anti-ship missles (which the Germans had by 1943).....the latter a lot cheaper anti-merchant weapon than submarines.

On the other hand if Hitler had had a time machine....he probably would have traveled to back 1914 and dumped all these goodies on the Kaiser. :o

Completely wrong.

You are focussing on tonnage of shipping sunk. who cares?

Look at percentage of incoming cargos that were sunk and you will see that the U-boats were trivial.

In their best year (42) the U-boats only sank 9.7% of the incoming cargos.

Again wrong, if you triple the cargos sunk you still dont have a great impact on Britains ability to continue the war.

You also (like most who put forward these alternative plans) assume that the alliese would not react, if the Germans built a serious number of subs pre war the allies would divert resources from cruisers and battleships to ASW assets.

ah but it was mother nature that killed the Germans and won the war (and a little bit of arrogance and ignorance on Hitlers part with respect to tactics)....hell the germans were in spitting distance of Moscow before "worst winter in 300 years" ground the Nazies to a halt...giving the time advantage to the side of the Russians.

Hard to say about the U-boat side of the house...maybe a true blockaide and widespread Wolfpack tactics...who knows...and like someone one else said...thank god they didnt win.

It seems pretty obvious to me: the war was lost when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and his declaring war on the U.S. was just extra insurance to make sure he lost. "What ifs" might have dragged out things, but the Allies would have eventually won.

Well, you're right with the 9,7%, but it's about cargos. I think in numbers of ships sunk vs ships built they managed to break it almost even for a month or two.

Also look an alternative in a real sub campaign. The Pacific. I don't have the figures with me, but I remember reading a thesis about the Americans sinking 90% of Japan's merchant fleet. Of course it was a smaller fleet, and it was also not replenished like the UK / US fleet.

If the Germans had more subs that percentage should be a lot more. But totally agree with you that they could not win a war with tonnage war. The Allies would have to find countermeasures and eventually they would.

But if again the Germans threw in the XXI in 1941 for ambush / anti TF duties then... :-j

Again, thank god these things never happened...

I think the whole is much more complex and my guess is that the U-Boot side is only part which by it alone would not have made a big change of the whole outcome. If Hitler would not have isnsisted that all the ME262 should have Dive bombing qualities and If the Heads of the Luftwaffe would not have insisted in not needing al long distance Bomber, and if they would havw taken Malta when they had the chance to keep Rommels back free then many things would look different today.

But that simply doesn't matter - by the time they were close the allies were building up a force to invade europe, not trying to defend Britain, all the Germans could hope to do was delay the invasion.

Smaller fleet, incompetently managed, barely protected and the allies were routinely reading their mail.

ah, the early type XXI! why would Germany introduce a type XXI? it was purely designed as a reaction to the utterly unexpected ability of the allied airpower to devestate the U-boat fleet.

If Germany knows they need the XXI, its already too late for Germany.

Many things have come to late just because they thought they don't need it. If we look at the PQ Convois, if the Germans would had more success in blocking / Sinking the Cargoes then the outcome of the Eastern front would have changed, but they realy did to less to late so the russians could reequipe the whola Armie with new Tanks, Plains and Weapons in such a short time that the Germans had no chance at all. So basicaly the real question is how and with what measurements the germans could disturb all these Transports.

The blocking of England and Russia with U-Boats alone would have required much more of them or a much more active role of the Main Fleet, wich the Germans also didn't want (mainly Hitler who didn't wanted to Risk the Tirpitz). So it reminds me a little of the WW I (i'm rteading the Battle of the Skagerat right now) and there was the same Problem with the Kaiser as they didn't wanted to Risk the Fleet.

The problem with that is that the Germans would lose their surface fleet and once it was gone the entire Brit Home fleet could be moved into productive areas of combat - the Tirpitz was far more effective as a threat than the Bizmark ever was as a warship.

Well, in the Atlantic it was more of that reading... I thought everyone knew that the war was won/lost (depends on p.o.v) at Bletchey Park by Alan Turing & friends... Allied intelligence helped by Hitler's stupid tactical decisions...[/quote]

I know that the Tirpitz was used as a threat for the Home Fleet, but when you think on the PQ 17 Drama where the British did spread the Convoi just because the Tirpitz had left the fjords and then what did the Germans do ? they did make a turn with the Tirpitz and returned without any real contact. My point actualy is that it was a shame that the germans didn't let the Tirpitz, Bismark,Blücher and the other bigies go out on a raid all together. I'm sure a coordinated action as it was planed in 1916 with the help of the U-Boats would have had a big impact in the British fleet and may would have changed a few things.

Yes i know the Germans had a small fleet, but they had (at least at the begining) still a technical advantage over the Brits as the ships where newer.

nice topic....
i don't think hitler did something wrong with his u-boat war.
he made only 3 mistakes.
- he didn't let his air-general continue to bomb the airfields in England, instead he orderd for bombing londen. and because of that, england had space to repair his airfields and build up an airforce.

- i think he was stupid to fight the sovjet union

- he made also a stupid mistake in ignoring his generals