History is full of "what ifs".

Here are two incidents which many people are not aware about and especially the one concerning Churchill:

Churchill nearly run over in NYC:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwar...hurchill%2C%20while%20driving%20a%20car.



FDR assassination attempt in Miami:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fdr-escapes-assassination-in-miami


I think it's safe to say that the strategic management of the war effort during WWII would have turned out very differently had both Churchill and FDR died in those incidents.

What if Napoleon won at Waterloo?

What if Hitler did not declare war on USA after December 7th?

What if the South won the Civil War?

What if OJ Simpson play The Terminator?

Lots of books written about this and many debates between historians as well.

Many people don't realize that the Tripartite Pact was a defensive alliance. In other words, Germany was not obligated by the treaty to go to war with the US but Hitler chose to do so at the recommendation of several of his generals and admirals.


Hitler made many mistakes but the two colossal mistakes that he made which doomed Germany to total defeat were both made in 1941. His invasion of the USSR and his declaration of war on the US.

I think his biggest mistake before those was in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. If he didn't start dropping bomb on London and continue destroying the English airfields, the Royal Air Force and war factories. Britain would had collapsed. The war would had ended.

No. Germany and Italy could not have defeated the British Empire until the Royal Navy was destroyed and it was exactly the existence of the Royal Navy why the air war over the UK occurred in the first place. And keep in mind that even the massive Allied bombing of German industry in 1943 and 1944 didn't prevent the Germans from producing record quantities of vehicles, munitions, etc. so it's extremely doubtful that the Germans in 1940 had the capability to sufficiently bomb the UK armaments industry into submission.

What I am thinking is what if Hitler won the Battle of Britain and his troops landed on British beaches and move on to take London. I don't know where Hitler would had landed his troops. Looking at the map I chose Dover, closer to France. GMap says Dover to London is 78 miles. That is nothing for the German Army with their Blitzkrieg.

With the Royal Navy in existence, any successful invasion of the UK was impossible. There is no "winning of the Battle of Britain" if the Royal Navy still exists.

Right because as everyone knows the Dover coast is well suited to amphibious operations with its protected anchorage and gradually sloping beaches. Hell, it's so close to France the Germans probably could have gotten a running start and just skipped across the channel like stones, rolling up on the Dover beach and straight on to London. Skipzkreig we can call it.

LOL Well played DBond, well played.

White Cliffs are just as good as white sandy beaches...right?

Heck, even the Romans and Normans knew that you don't invade Britain at fricking Dover.

But it is soooo close!

Sorry for the derail, but that one was just teed up for me ya know?

Hitler what-ifs are a little cliche, but historical what-ifs, especially if they are related to WW2, are one of my favorite topics for discussion. There are many that make for excellent debate, but the one that fascinates me the most?

What if Bull hadn't run?

What if Halsey had not taken the obvious bait and indeed left TF 34 guarding San Bernardino that night? If I discount the human cost for a moment, I'm left with the academic exercise of what the outcome of this engagement would have been. And it makes for great discussion, and I've seen strong cases for various outcomes, although I have my opinion too.

This "what if" concept is quite interesting, and in fact, if you were to change the placement of a few dominoes in random locations along the chain, a profoundly different outcome could result.

A nice way to test this beyond dominoes, which are far too simple, is through real time strategy games, particularly in an online multiplayer session. Say a community plays a single map--there are strategies and tactics that are accepted as best case for that map, depending on player position. From my own personal experience, doing the same thing over and over produces a generally similar result unless the skill divide between two opponents is drastic. However, if you change up your strategy, do something different early in the game--one might think you would be doomed to fail because you were doing something different than the generally accepted method--that you would end up.. behind and disadvantaged.

This could be true.

However, what I have found is if you perform a different, radical strategy, the state of the game will also be altered and quite different 10 minutes, 15 minutes, even 30 minutes into the game. The course doesn't revert to the generally prescribed path. The actions taken do matter, and there isn't a necessary route to achieve the end goal of victory. The changes compound on one another leading to an entirely different future state.

One could say that the established norms and prescriptions are wrong, even though they have shown time and time again that victory will result from sticking to them.


So if anyone is curious about this "what if" concept, try a real time strategy game sometime versus others. They're fun to tinker with.

I look at the map and pick the shortest distance. I don't know the beaches of Dover had cliffs. If the U.S. Rangers could climb the cliffs at Point du Hoc, the mighty unstoppable German Army of 1940 could had done the same at Dover with ease..

Some of these photos show regular beaches, not everything is cliffy in Dover.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attract...lbumid=-160&type=0&category=-160

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/dover-england-beach.html

That is a very poor comparison and creates a very false comparison of situations and capabilities.

As stated before as long as the Royal Navy was strong it would have tore up the invading force...The British navy has always been a force to be reckoned with by any enemies.Hitlers biggest mistake was taking on Russia,He didn't learn what Napoleon did the hard way.

Hitler couldn't learn.

He already knew everything.

A quote from Franz Halder who was chief of the general staff from 1938-1942:

"The Russian colossus...has been underestimated by us... whenever a dozen divisions are destroyed the Russians replace them with another dozen... ."

That is true. I play Panzer General game as the German fighting the Russians and at the end of each battle, there is a historical note. I WIKI it and it's accurate. In some of those battles, the German destroyed or captured 1000 of tanks, guns, vehicles of all kind and took many many prisoners. In one battle over 600,000 Russian soldiers were taken prisoners. During the entire war, Germany took as many as 6 million Russian soldiers prisoners and over 2/3 of them did not survive the war.

The Russian had so much of everything and it wasn't just from what the American and British gave them. Their war factories was like American war factories. They never stopped and maybe made more tanks and guns and vehicles and airplanes than the American war factories did.

I remember reading one time that in a battle where Russia attacked instead of defending, they had 1000 of guns for each km along a 1000 km long front. Imagine being a German soldier and that many guns open fire at the same time on you.

One thing the Russians did was unflinchingly throw troops into a battle without regard for losses.They had an almost unlimited supply of fresh meat and an unlimited vast land to overextend the German troops and due to Hitler the Generals were unable to fight a solid military strategy and were always told to push forward in a rather haphazard way.But he thought he was smarter than his Generals .Heck he was a Corporal he knew everything.And in the end the German people lost everything.


NFB if you like Panzer General check this out.It's an older Panzer Corps game and there's a Panzer Corps 2 also but I prefer the gold edition of the first it has all the DLC's rolled into one.It's what I quit playing Panzer General for.
https://www.matrixgames.com/game/panzer-corps-gold

I think that's because the Russian shot anyone who retreated.

https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads....et-storm-ww2-in-the-east-doc#Post4539067



Hey rwatson, cool. I will look into that.

When Russians retreated the Commissars were waiting for him.good reason to take their changes moving forward.

I'm pretty sure you are talking about Operation Bagration in August 1944.


The German army was and I repeat, was ANNIHILATED during that campaign. Army Group Center ceased to exist.

You may want to revise your opinion on this.

Soviet factories did indeed stop for some time (not competely but still), quality did drop too, and if not for US/GB assistance, 1942 could have ended in an even less favourable position for them.

A full defeat is maybe a stretch, but who knows ?

On Britain defeat: once the airfields destroyed, and provided no war in the East nor against US, with german air superiority Royal Navy may not have tried its luck into the channel with battleships, so again, who knows ? Not in 1940, but 41, 42 ?

All the Jeeps ,other material we sent them and Spam kept them fighting
https://www.historynet.com/russias-...the-ussr-in-world-war-ii-book-review.htm

I think it’s fair to say that the armaments and other supplies that the US/UK gave to the USSR was a significant assistance for the Soviet war effort but it was not the decisive factor.

That's a true statement PM we just supplied material to keep the Soviet fighting machine running.I believe they would have never given up or be defeated.Just possibly would have taken a bit longer
.