IMHO the uboats did not cause Germany to lose the war. This is to simplistic in itself. There are many factors all culminating in the failure to win. The uboat was just but one of those factors.

The Battle of Moscow in 41/42 was fought before any shippment was made to Russia.

Bullcrap, Stalin had no plans what so ever to attack Germany, after all Stalin was doing well selling oil and steel to Hitler his best customer. ;)

As for the U-Boats they were screwed right from the beginning, 20 odd year gap from WW1 to WW2 and hardly any improvement made to them. That's a bad start if there ever was one.

The one thing I've always wondered about is what would have happened if "Warplan Orange" had actually come about?. The US Navy had thoroughly trashed the Spanish Navy in the Spanish-American War and the Japanese Navy crushed the Russians in the 1904-1905 war they had,so both sides had a history of victory.

I'm not sure who would have won,but I have no doubt it would have been a bloody and costly battle...for both sides.

Sea Lion
 

Sea Lion was not launched because it could not have succeeded. It took much more than Raeder's word to prevent it. Raeder was only the fall guy for a collective and sane decision. Had the Germans used such sanity against Russia they could have lasted longer. Unfortunately, as all of you have demonstrated the Wehrmacht only had one very nebulous plan: attack and relentlessly expand outward until you have no concentrated strength anywhere and have outrun your supplies, then die a glorious death. No matter which way you look, Hitler and his cronies were taking the finest military organization in the world (American generals considered that unless they outnumbered German ground units at least three to one there was no chance of success) and just pointlessly wasting it. Germans deserved better than the whole stupid war, stupidly begun, stupidly planned, stupidly executed in a hundred different ways, all fatal to their leaders' cause. Thank God for that!

If Hitler had listened to his Generals and used rivers to defend behind and fought a true defensive battle instead of launching small offensive actions that had no chance of success,they might have been able to pull off a draw against the USSR.

No amount of human wave attacks would be able to dislodge a well postioned defender. That was a lesson the Japanese failed to learn in WW2.

This point I agree with you. :up:

Sea Lion was BS and that is now a fact! :stare:

Way back in 1975 the veteran's of Germany and England met at Sanhurst, I'm talking about those involved in Sea Lion. Any how they concluded it was a no go, last year or the year before that Military experts went over the 1975 meeting and it was concluded Germany would had suffered a blood bath. To sum up Dover is invaded and the maxim the Germans would had got in land was about 15 miles lasting three or four weeks before they had to withdraw from lack of supplies.


Sea Lion build up. :rotfl:

D-Day build up. :ping: :stare: :yep:

Very much agreed sir http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...s/thumbsup.gif

Grab this and let us know what would have been the result.

http://www.matrixgames.com/games/game.asp?gid=326

Steed - you can't compare the two. The D-day buildup was necessarily much larger because not only was the proposed front much bigger, but any amount of logistical support not brought with the invading group would be forced to travel quite a larger distance than just across the channel. The reason that most discount Sealion is because of hindsight and without a clear understanding of what could have been. First off, one must recall that at the time Sealion was "in play", the Blitzkreig had never been countered. Looking at Sealion today, everyone sees an attack that is now regarded as a tactical blunder (let the spearhead pass, destroy the support elements) - but at the time no one had a clue on how to stop the blitz. The initial 15 mile incursion was detailed as being how far in the spearhead would likely get before it stopped to let its support catch up. The idea that it never moved forward again is because everyone assumes that the RN would have swept the channel, breaking the line of supply, and thus leading the existing elements trapped between a hostile force and water - leading to piecemeal destruction.

If one takes the Royal Navy out of the equation, which my admittedly unhistorical situation would do, there would be no breaking of the supply line across the channel, and if you think that Hitler would have been content to just give up one foot of the British Isles after a successful landing, you may want to reread your history. Sealion could easily have been the end of England. I will admit however, not exactly as it was planned - it would have taken thinking "outside the box" to make that happen.

Again - back to the question of the uboats - had they been used creatively - they could have had an even greater impact on events. This is not to say that they could have "won" the war, or lost it alone either - but they could have been used more effectively in a "combined arms" way. By using Sealion to make the RN come into the open so that the Uboats could get to them, in 1940 when ASW was still not as advanced as it became later, the Germans would have been following the advice of Sun Tzu - Strike at what your enemy must defend. By making them defend the channel, they (the RN) would have to expose themselves to an unexpected onslaught for which, at the time, it was ill prepared to handle.

Generally it can be agreed on that Hitler attacking Russia with a belligerent Britain still behind was a collossal blunder. You'd have thought that the ghost of Napoleon might have advised him of it. It is also agreed that Germany threw it's scant resources in too many directions, and that they took a far too leasurely attitude to ramping up their war economy.

But I think most what-if's focus on either a treaty with Britain or an invasion of Britain, or i suppose a more successful attack on the Soviet Union.

To focus briefly on the latter point, i think that although Japan could not have gained much by conquering eastern siberia, an attack would have forced the USSR to keep it's siberian divisions there, and they would not have been able to ship them West to fight the Nazis - which they did once they believed the intel that Japan intended to strike south east and west. Had that been the case, the great encirclement at Stalingrad may not have been possible, and who knows what may have happened if the Rostov fields had fallen and the USSR defeated...

Still, even then...maybe the USSR would still have won. I think we also overestimate the influence of the Murmansk convoys. Sure they helped but i think we in the west maybe like to play up how we saved the USSR from defeat.

But for Britain, i think RR's general point that once the US was in the war, the U-boats would have needed to be massively more effective to have an effect on the outcome holds true. Of course it is not possible to starve out the USA by submarine, just as it's not possible to starve out the USSR by submarine. But of course it took a few years for the US to get interested in fighting tyranny. Britain could have been blockaded. Neutrals could and were sunk under the treaties then present. Carrying contraband cargoes, unmistakeably moving towards Britain, or escorted by British escorts were all legitimate targets, weren't they?

I think the U-boat blockade could have been successful if the US was kept out of the war for longer, and if the resources had been concertedly drawn up with the vision of defeating Britain. But Hitler never really thought about britain, did he? It was not his plan. He was hoping to have a continental empire while Britian ruled the seas in some kind of partnership - or something.

Sealion was doubtful to succeed. IF the BEF had been captured entirely in France, there would have been a few months were britain lacked a full strength army, but even if Hitler did land a full army in britain, soon the full british fleet would arrive and his army would be stranded in half of Britain and start running out of supplies.

So i really think the U-boats were his only chance, and he should have had more of them, lots more. And the treaty would need to be signed before the attack on Russia, or the US entry into the war.

That actually is nonsense. If you're talking about Rezun's thesis that is.

Moscow succeeded in a ceasefire with Japan into a formal armistice. Tripartite Pact was signed in 1940. Japan visted Rome and Berlin, included Russia in the pact. It was separate negotiations with Japan that Moscow was able to have a formal armistice. The Soviets were clearing the decks in Asia to give themselves a free hand in Europe. Besides, Japan was embarking in on a southern option that led up to Pearl Harbor.

As far as im concerned, Germany lost the war the instant they let the Little Corporal became head of state.

I’ve got to agree with Captainhaplo that the British might have been brought to surrender in the winter of 1940-41 if Dönitz had been given the 300 U-Boats he had been promised at the start of the war. If you look at the statistics for the U-Boat war for 1940 and 1941, the Germans were sinking about 2.5 ships per month per active U-Boat that was at sea, and had a loss ratio of one U-boat per 30 ships sunk. Assuming they had 300 U-Boats on Sept 1939, and had 100 at sea per month, they would have been able to sink (100 X 2.5) or 250 ships per month and lost about 9 of their U-Boats. These would have been easily replaced.

The average British ship in those days was 5800 tons, so the 100 active U-Boats would have sunk about 1.25 million tons per month, compared to the actual 300,000 tons with 20 to 25 boats at sea. Don't forget this was the Happy Time. The British merchant fleet in 1939 was 3000 ships of 17.5 million DWT. They could buy another 500 ships from neutral fleets with 2.9 million DWT if needed. If Dönitz had hit the war running, he could have sunk 3000 ships in the first year, or about 85% of the British merchant fleet. If we assume that those sinking rates are too high and cut them in half, the British would still have lost the 3000 ships by September 1941. It wasn’t until 1942 that the Allies got their ship production up to 7.9 million tons and 14.6 million tons in 1943. By then it would have been too late, and Dönitz would have been dining at Buckingham Place.

In January 1942, the British were down to six weeks food supply with the actual U-Boat sinkings. They would have been out of food under this scenario and forced to surrender. The Germans would have been invited to come ashore as long as they brought food. Operation Sealion wouldn’t have been needed.

As for the Sealion invasion in mid-1940, it would have succeeded. I had an uncle in the army in Britain from 1939 on, and they only had 50 tanks in England after Dunkirk in May 1940. According to him, half of the Army and all of the Home Guard were using broomsticks to train, as their rifles were still in France. It wasn’t until late 1940 or early 1941 that everyone had a rifle.

Here's a pretty good essay on why Operation Sealion was probably a doomed pipe dream. The most terrifying aspect is that if the Germans had gotten ashore the RAF would have begun bombing the beacheads with gas.

http://gateway.alternatehistory.com/essays/Sealion.html