Jobbo_Fett posted:

FAUXTON posted:

I want more of this please holy gently caress

CoolCab posted:

I really don't feel like the UK could possibly settle with Nazi Germany by the time they controlled France. That's the neighbouring country (natural moat notwithstanding) and any time they allow them to have it is time Germany can spend building ships in their new strategically valuable ports.

FAUXTON posted:

I want more of this please holy gently caress

Nebakenezzer posted:

e: http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/477/Polka-Dot-Warriors.aspx

hogmartin posted:

B-17s get all the glory but I will never stop loving B-24s.

FAUXTON posted:

These guys were just plane assholes

Nebakenezzer posted:

Google "B-24 assembly ships"

I'd post a few photos, but photobucket is being bitchy.

e: http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/477/Polka-Dot-Warriors.aspx

SlothfulCobra posted:

Between the fall of France and Barbarossa, Britain was pretty much the only thing left of the war. It was probably the closest the Germans ever came to "winning" the war, but they never had a plan to deal with Britain, so they were pretty much doomed from that point on.

They made some pretty impressive gains in Russia, but what does the scenario look like where they win and smash the USSR? Do they finally mount that over the channel invasion with their forces depleted by the Russian war? Do they just sit tight and hurl bombers back and forth with Britain until 2102 when Mecha-Hitler finally manages to talk down Winston Churchill clone number 21?

FAUXTON posted:

The US redirects the same flow of lend-lease to China and presumably puts a thumb on the scale by arming Chiang more heavily than Mao and then looking the other way when he kills anyone suspected of even smelling the least bit Communist.

SlothfulCobra posted:

Between the fall of France and Barbarossa, Britain was pretty much the only thing left of the war. It was probably the closest the Germans ever came to "winning" the war, but they never had a plan to deal with Britain, so they were pretty much doomed from that point on.

They made some pretty impressive gains in Russia, but what does the scenario look like where they win and smash the USSR? Do they finally mount that over the channel invasion with their forces depleted by the Russian war? Do they just sit tight and hurl bombers back and forth with Britain until 2102 when Mecha-Hitler finally manages to talk down Winston Churchill clone number 21?

FAUXTON posted:

I want more of this please holy gently caress

SeanBeansShako posted:

You think is exciting, you should have seen the paint art for the WW1 fighters.

A German ace had a face painted on the front of his plane.

Nenonen posted:

My god, it's Thomas the Tank Engine's dad

P-Mack posted:

Soviet aid was going mostly to Chiang too, no one took the communists seriously until pretty late in the game.

SlothfulCobra posted:

Between the fall of France and Barbarossa, Britain was pretty much the only thing left of the war. It was probably the closest the Germans ever came to "winning" the war, but they never had a plan to deal with Britain, so they were pretty much doomed from that point on.

They made some pretty impressive gains in Russia, but what does the scenario look like where they win and smash the USSR? Do they finally mount that over the channel invasion with their forces depleted by the Russian war? Do they just sit tight and hurl bombers back and forth with Britain until 2102 when Mecha-Hitler finally manages to talk down Winston Churchill clone number 21?

HEY GAL posted:

haha, it's funny because these people are going to rule us soon

Raenir Salazar posted:

This is exhausting.

Tias posted:

Not necessarily, AFAIK there were good contacts between the union and the states.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Google "B-24 assembly ships"

I'd post a few photos, but photobucket is being bitchy.

e: http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/477/Polka-Dot-Warriors.aspx

HEY GAL posted:

look at the pilot's face too, he knows what's up

Alchenar posted:

The question is reversible - The UK literally has no plan to win the war at that point either.

Say gay-black-Hitler never invades Russia and so there's no Eastern Front. Say the Nazis love bomb the USA and make it plain that the Pacific war is nothing to do with them in order to keep the public anti-war in Europe enough that Roosevelt cannot get involved. Say there are repeated offers of peace if only the UK will accept German hegemony on the continent.

Eventually a peace faction forms in Parliament and Churchill gets forced out. That's how that deadlock gets broken.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Shipping it would've been hard if Britain peaced out and didn't want US ships in their ports though.

And shipping everything to Yakutsk or whatever would've just been impractical. Not that it couldn't happen or whatever, but it would've stretched supply lines a lot.

Torch/Meditarranean + D-day can't happen under a non-belligerent/neutral UK

Raenir Salazar posted:

If the US was at war with Japan yeah, but a neutral UK there's no reason why supplies can't travel through Murmansk or through Persia that now the USSR gets to totally occupy and have access to those oil fields forever.

Alchenar posted:

The question is reversible - The UK literally has no plan to win the war at that point either.

Say gay-black-Hitler never invades Russia and so there's no Eastern Front. Say the Nazis love bomb the USA and make it plain that the Pacific war is nothing to do with them in order to keep the public anti-war in Europe enough that Roosevelt cannot get involved. Say there are repeated offers of peace if only the UK will accept German hegemony on the continent.

Eventually a peace faction forms in Parliament and Churchill gets forced out. That's how that deadlock gets broken.

feedmegin posted:

Counterpoint, the Treaty of Amiens. It's not like the UK hadn't been here before and it's not like eternal German domination of the Continent was ever going to be acceptable.

FAUXTON posted:

These guys were just plane assholes

OwlFancier posted:

That took me an inordinately long time to figure out what I was looking at.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

I think the best argument I can come up with that counts towards the Germans is that Moscow was a central transportation hub. However, that doesn't really stop supplies from the Urals from reaching other destinations. Certainly, it'd be a blow to morale/prestige as losing your capital city would do, but, as with anything that is pure speculation, the farther you take it, the gayer your black Hitler becomes...


Does he cite any counter-examples of research that "proves you wrong"?

quote:

Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Raenir, here are some comments you made that I will respond to.

quote:

1. That they should have won the Battle of Britain by throwing more resources at it longer (they still would have lost).

No they wouldn't have. Britain was on the ropes, their air force was all but destroyed. And as I pointed out before, Germany had already conquered Poland and France and the only nation resisting Germany's total dominance of Europe was the British. Had Britain been eliminated as a staging place, American intervention would not even have been possible.

quote:

2. That they should have delayed Barbarossa for a year (disastrous for the Germans, they invaded at the best possible time, hence them being essentially "lucky" up until this point).

The only advantage to the Germans for launching Barbarossa when they did was that the Soviet army was deployed in attack formations, and not in defensive formations. But since the Soviets thought the Nazi-Soviet Pact guaranteed that Germany would not attack them, they probably would have waited before doing anything to change their strategic deployment.

quote:

3. That the Japanese an entire different country and geopolitical situation, could have done something entirely different from what they did!

You miss the point that the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor enabled the USA to enter the war against Germany while Britain was still a viable protagonist. Records are that Hitler was not pleased by the Japanese attack, precisely because he knew it meant he would have to deal with the Americans now, with its immense resources and productivity.

quote:

4. That they should have kept using the Paratroopers after their "one bad experience in crete" (They did, but they lost most of their transport planes in the effort, so Varsity style landings were out of the question for Barbarossa).

The planes could have been rebuilt and what they already had could have been used against Britain instead of Russia.

quote:

5. I'm not sure if you supposed not invading Yugoslavia or not; but the invasion of Yugoslavia was not with forces designated for Barbarossa and did not affect the timeline for Barbarossa at all. Additionally invading 6 months earlier would've meant that (a) the Germans would have been less prepared than they were, and would have been less effective and had less vehicles, and (b) the weather would have been far worse in actuality.

Invading Yugoslavia was not a great challenge, since the German Nazis had many sympathizers in Yugoslavia. The Yugoslavian air force had recently been decimated by natural disasters, which Hitler took as indication of supernatural intervention on his side (Hitler dabbled in spiritualism).

quote:

6. Winter uniforms. This actually is a myth; the main problem was that the supply demands for barbarossa were so great that it just wasn't possible to supply over 160 divisions with winter uniforms in a timely manner; notwithstanding the fact that OKW had went into the invasion with the intention not for reaching Moscow, but to destroy the Red Army in the opening phases of the war "One swift kick and the whole rotten structure would come tumbling down" and this affected ALL of German High Command's planning for Barbarossa, Hitler isn't to blame here, but rather German officer culture that deemphasized supply and logistics, and grand strategy.

This is just ignorant. Of course the German military's combat effectiveness was virtually halved in cold weather because the soldiers were suffering from frost bite and other cold weather attrition. And whether or not it was Hitler who was primarily responsible for launching Barbarossa, or whether it was partly the fault of the General staff, changes nothing. The basic point remains that the operation was launched without properly equipping the Wehrmacht for a sustained military effort.

You have not responded to the simple facts I pointed out that Germany swiftly and easily conquered Poland and France, and expelled the British Expeditionary Force from the continent, and thus had virtual hegemony over mainland Europe, making it necessary for the Allies to have to engage in an amphibious assault even to get back into the war (this is ignoring the Africa campaign, which took place on a different continent). At that point, Germany had already nearly attained victory in WWII. How can any sane person deny that?

Nenonen posted:

Are you having this exchange in the hopes of turning his mind?

Raenir Salazar posted:

Orson Scott Card's forums.