Interesting discussion guys. And hindsight is a wonderful thing. It's great fun to explore "what if" scenarios and our hobby makes that a fascinating prospect.
Unfortunately the facts are, as ever, rather more banal.
Adolph Hitler was a European fascist dictator whose only military experience was as a corporal in the army and saw militery campaigns as primarily land battles.
His obsession and single motivating factor for going to war was the destruction of Bolshevism, ie Soviet communism in Russia and, once he had accomplished that, the creation of "living space" there for the future expansion of the German "master race".
He had virtually no understanding of the strategic importance of naval power projection on a world scale as it was irrelevant, as he saw it, to his struggle in Russia, which of course, was a land battle.
He needed a quick victorious local war so concentrated on developing weapons systems with short term tactical value, ie jet and rocket technology and consequently had very little inclination to develop long term strategic weapons systems such as nuclear weapons, as he thought he wouldn't need them. Fortunatly he chose not to develop nuclear weapons and stick them in his rockets.
He had very little strategic appreciation of the massive industial might of the US and held them in contempt.
As he saw it, there was really two wars going on at the same time. His war against Soviet Russia, and Japan's war against the US.
He fatally ignored the fact that Japan, as his ally, could have joined the struggle against Russia and, working together, probably would have defeated the soviets in 1942. It was "his" war!
And subsequently he was defeated by being at war with the two greatest industrial powers the world had ever seen. It would not have made any difference to the end result no matter how many jets, tiger tanks, rockets, subs, or anything else German industry could have made.
It took time, but they could not have won.
Which is why they lost. Thank god.
Dredd out.
