[goodpoints]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

The problem with playing as a German U-boat is that the U-boat was an entirely inappropriate weapon for Germany to use, which had no capacity to win the war or even its part in the war. Every pfennig spent on a U-Boat, every man wasted in one was a nail in the coffin of the Third Reich. I'm not even going to visit the subject of the evil of the Nazi party and of the state of Germany as a result. I'm only going to talk about whether U-Boats contributed to Germany's potential victory or contributed to their defeat.

The U-Boat was a weapon directed at only one nation on earth: The UK. The plan was that they could starve Britain into surrender and consolidate their gains on the continent. But they made a fatal mistake in planning. You see US submarines were appropriate for use against Japan because all Japanese supplies came in and out of Japan on Japanese bottoms. When we sank a ship it was a Japanese ship and we were directly contributing to their defeat. Maybe you can see where I'm going here.

Because the UK was VERY different. Supplies coming there came on the bottoms of all the nations of the world, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Canada, and in order to stop those supplies it was necessary to sink vessels of all those other nations. What was the unavoidable and foreseeable result of unconditional submarine warfare? That's right, Germany against the world. That included the staunchly isolationist United States. US entry into the war absolutely guaranteed the defeat of Germany. U-Boats made US entry equally guaranteed.

Now some have said (while calling me stupid in very picturesque and entertaining ways that discredited them greatly) the US didn't declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on the US. That is true. The day after the Pearl Harbor attack Hitler decided he'd make a show of unity with his buddy the Emporer and declare war.

But he was already at war with the US. What was the lend-lease program of US destroyers to the British with American crews aboard sinking U-Boats but war against Germany? What was allowing Churchill and cabinet to set up government offices in New York City as a precaution against possible British defeat but taking the British side in the war? By sinking American ships the Germans had already begun to reap their just reward. Hitler's declaration was just showmanship without substance.

And what could a U-Boat do against the US? Sink a cornfield in Kansas? A stockyard in Chicago? A Boeing plant in Washington? What could a U-Boat or even two dozen U-Boats do against a thousand ship convoy and there were dozens of those? The U-Boat was too slow, didn't carry enough armament to make any impact at all. The surface was entirely controlled by the Allies with no help anywhere for a U-Boat. As soon as it left port it was on its own.

Admiral Daniel Gallery, who led an American Jeep carrier force on the Atlantic turned U-Boat hunting into a science. Sight a U-boat. Force it down. Now you can draw a circle representing its maximum range before it has to surface for air. Cover that circle with aircraft. Dead U-Boat.

What would the vaunted Type XXI have done? Why, they would have made Admiral Gallery draw a larger circle. The result would be the same because the surface of the Atlantic was an Allied fishing pond. Snorkels were as visible on radar as a battleship. The Type XXI was just a different style coffin.

U-boats never had any capacity to win. They guaranteed the entry of the United States and a dozen other nations into the war against Germany. And for what?

They were supposed to defeat Britain, the one country on earth most disposed to be Germany's friend. In fact Britain came a hair's breadth from allying with Germany. We all think the abdication of King Edward VIII was all about Wallace Simpson, the "woman I love." That is false, it was about his sympathy for Nazi Germany and his desire to ally with Germany. Churchill stood almost alone as he garnered the coalition he needed to ouster this renegade king and avoid the alliance. He did it knowing the result would be war.

However, Britain was tired of war. They had lost an entire generation just 20 years before and had no stomach for a repeat. What if the Germans had bought a vowel? What if they had used craftiness instead of skullduggery? They steamrollered France, consolidating their hold on the continent. The British army had been shoved into Dunkirk to be evacuated by every boat those on the island of Britain could muster. The Luftwaffe didn't attack. Why?

Doesn't matter. What if Hitler would have waited for the British to have their army safely home? "To our British friends. You have done your job well. You had to be on the continent to honor your treaty obligations and you have done your duty. You can be justly proud of your efforts, but now your obligation is satisfied.

Germany and Britain have always been close. Our royal families are brothers, mothers, sons, daughters. Of all the nations on earth, we have the most in common. We are natural friends.

Your army is safe because I directed that no land or air attacks be made on your withdrawing troops. There is no reason for further bloodletting between us. Let us declare peace, holding our present borders, safely separated by the English Channel and forge a new future as partners in a new world we will mold in our image."

But those DAMNED submarines! Every one of them would put the lie to such a crafty and probably effective appeal to a war weary Britain. Without them the appeal would be very persuasive and probably successful. Let's quit and divide the booty. War over!

The U-boats were unnecessary. They were ineffective. They never had the capacity to deliver victory but carried the guarantee of German defeat. Every pfennig spent, every man enlisted in their service was entirely wasted--an actual contribution to the war finances of the enemy. The use of submarines in the war amounted to treason against the German state.

An interesting analysis, not sure I agree with your conclusion, but something I hadn't really thought about in depth before. Though you could certainly tie it to the pervasive faith placed in costly experimental "wonder weapons" (accompanied by a dogged resistance to innovation in military thinking) by the Nazis and proto-Nazi right wing military cliques that especially intensified after WWI.

While it is funny to remember that the House of Windsor is really the Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha (who subsumed through marriage the Haus Hannover), I think you give you attribute far too much political and diplomatic acumen to the Nazis than was ever really demonstrated to be within the realm of plausibility.

From a material and political perspective the invasion and occupation of France was probably the most unnecessary, pointless, and least potentially profitable military campaign waged by the Third Reich. For the gain of an unreliable labor force that could not suffice to supply even the reconstruction and defense of occupied French territory; one of the most fortified and naturally defensible borders in Europe (the Rhine) was exchanged for an unfortified sea border more than twice as long that would encourage one of the most costly and inept military engineering projects in history (the Atlantic Wall). The more pertinent question I think would be why the Germans didn't pull another Sedan (the first one) and go home with a shattered enemy in anarchy (and then invest in military AND non-military industry) rather than exploring the possibility of keeping a country they had absolutely no capacity to occupy as a bargaining chip.

And in regards to Dunkirk, and it is certainly one of the foremost examples of the almost comical level of faith in new military technology divorced from any operational study, the Luftwaffe did not halt. Kleist halted. Who ordered him to doesn't really matter because it was almost certainly for the same reason: the belief that new weapons could prevail without reevaluating prior doctrine that pervaded the German command in equal degree as the Anglo-French. And all that reevaluation would have really taken on the German part was to actually know something about the Alte Fritz Prussians they worshiped, and look to von Seydlitz and von Zieten. Only the Belgians and Dutch conducted the campaign with any conceivable degree of efficiency. The Luftwaffe on the other hand, gave it the old college try... and lost a third of the only effective CAS planes they would ever make by assigning them ASUW missions, with little to no escort, totally at odds with their design. Yet somehow they couldn't manage to break by attrition a besieged enemy trapped against friendly sea all of 100km from home and some of largest ports in the world. You sure that wasn't Schlitzkrieg?

Though I would say none of the above would have really mattered unless the Germans had the ability to either swallow their Lebensraum and be content with continuing to negotiate trade agreements with the USSR or else to hold on to the Caucasus oil fields and pipe it out. Which of those was the more likely possibility, I certainly couldn't wager a guess either way. But all this assumes the thinking of somewhat intelligent, rational people. Who often are unfortunately compared to Napoleon with the insinuation that they ALMOST had it, if not for Général Janvier / Marshall Winter. Except, Napoleon shattered the Russian army after they broke an alliance, made them destroy their own industrial capacity, then lost his army on the way back. Hitler broke an alliance, gave the USSR Germany's spot as the world's second largest economy, and lost his army on the way there.