Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
@Commander Wallace: re Germany's intention to conquer the world, in WW2
The Horten or Go 229 and its theoretical future changes and use are fascinating, but speculative. Had Germany had the atomic bomb before the war ended, or right at the start, it indeed would have been a game changer. But Germany was not as far in its trials to build one, also because a few of the scientists like Heisenberg actively delayed research, or at least did not spread the knowledge to his more.. nationalist fellow scientists.
The war against England or a probable invasion would not have happened, all that Hitler could hope for was to demoralise England to a ceasefire or giving up. With the existing Luftwaffe already this was not possible – if he had had the atomic bomb in 1941 it probably would have been used to get England out of the war, but not to invade it.
Same with the US, of course Hitler was raging that american bombers bombed german cities and war production into oblivion, and he would have loved retaliation. Carrying bombs or "the bomb" to the US would have been theoretically possible (they also had the ME 264 and a few others), but again this would have been used to get the US out of the war. There was no plan or possibility for an invasion of any kind.
Hitler never wanted to fight England, nor the US, when the latter declared war because of Poland this was of course a blow to his plans, but the only military solution at this time was to get France out of the way so England could not land as it had done in WW1.
Later in the war with Japan at war with the US, declaring war was intended to buy him time in Europe and in the Atlantic; indeed Mr King was a bit of a disaster when it came to organised convoy protection. American waships had attacked german ships already before declaring war, and pushed their national sea boundaries to the mid-atlantic, so war only was a matter of time anyway.
I just don’t see german soldiers sailing to New York and fighting their way ashore, certainly not fighting their way across the country to the other coast.
Germany just did not have the man power, and even with it would have been a crazy idea.
There are some realistic good ideas describing the german theoretical strategy and plans in Herman Wouk's "The winds of war" by a hypothetical german general, but even the US of the time never had to fear an 'invasion'. Not by Germany, and not by Japan.
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I'll say this, even though Germany was just about the size of a single US state, it took almost the entire world 6 years to defeat them and that says something about their natural pugnaciousness and skill at warfare.
That plus the fact that we had thousands of homegrown nazis holding rallies in Madison Square Garden among other places before the war lent credence to the out to dominate the world concept. Maybe the fuherer of America was not going to be a native born German but he'd be wearing a swastika and reporting to them if hitler and co had got their way and that's close enough to world domination for me.