Hacker News Reader

Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

Even if it hadn't been for Enigma, and even if it hadn't been for the weather in Russia, I still don't think it's possible to construct a sensible scenario where the eventual outcome of the war is delayed by more than a few months.

If VE day didn't come in May thanks to Turing, it would have come in August thanks to Oppenheimer.

View on HN

Hitler made a tactical error delaying an invasion of the uk. That was a pretty important factor.

I think there is absolutely no way you can attribute the winning of the war to any one thing; Turing, the RAF, Russian winter, the sea routes/convoys and more all contributed.

Why did I have to read down THIS far to find someone speaking this sense!

Thanks. Though I think, in fairness, not too many people are arguing that any one event actually won the war.

The problem, I think, is that it is very easy to look back and see how things "should" have gone differently. Hindsight is a bitch :) I know a few people who have started a sentence with the words "If I were Hitler I would have...", and you have to turn round and say yes. Any sane man in Hitlers shoes could have won the war. But Hitler was in Hitlers shoes, and he didn't.

And then there are those who are often forgotten when discussing of the war. For example what about the Australian contribution; the Japanese are known for being resilient, refusing to give ground under any circumstances. But the Aussies had the same attitude and theirs was one of the most successful armies in the war (even in all time I think). They harried the Japanese on a number of flanks, that arguably kept them at bay where otherwise they may have won (or prolonged even further) the Pacific war.

Then there is the more complex matter of things which would have lost the war. This usually ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous; with all sorts of theories. But often ignores simple things like, the U Boats could have got lucky and hit 3 or 4 convoys in a row. Logistically that could have won Germany the war as easily as anything else. It's simply impossible to predict.

A lot of Brits will argue that us holding out for those crucial few months was what won the war; I'm not entirely sure I disagree, it was certainly an extremely important thing. But so many people forget the country was full of US, French and other soldiers at the time; it was multi-national resilience. And, at the same time, the supply convoys kept us going, again a multi-national force.

At the end of the day my History teacher at school summed it up best:

You will meet all sorts of people who claim they won the war. But the truth is people won the war; lots of people from different nations pulling together in the same direction for once. It's a thing to be proud of. But also to be sad that it is only in the face of war and eradication we can truly band together like that

Upvote for the digger love :) Rats of Tobruk, Kokoda Track - some very hard young men involved there.

Scenario 1: The Germans decide to not kill the jews, and even let the top Jewish physicists stay. With their help, the Germans create a nuclear weapon in 1943-44 instead of canceling the whole project in 1942.

Scenario 2: The guy in charge of the Luftwaffe isn't a complete retard. The germans finish off the french instead of letting them run off to britain, they then invade Britain, not giving the Americans a base of operations.

I can keep going.

It's more interesting to look at alternative histories for World War I, in my opinion. Because the parties involved weren't as clearly `good' or `evil'.

the thing is though, WWI was mostly static trench warfare. There wasn't much that could "go" differently.

I guess the US could have never joined

Do you mistake the western front for the whole war?

Interesting would have been: Germany, instead of planning of going after France first, Russia later--goes for Russia only and just defends against France. After defeating Russia (let's assume), they try to make peace in the west.

Actually people tend to really overestimate how important trenches were to the stalemate. Sure, it took a lot of effort to break through a trench line but both sides were perfectly capable of doing it when they could devote enough resources. The problem was that railroads meant that the mobility of the defenders was always much greater than the mobility of the attackers and telegraphs meant that the abilty of the defenders to coordinate was much greater than the ability of the attackers to coordinate. The internal combustion engine and radio changed this when WWII rolled around.

There were also very many places where things could have turned out differently. For instance, if the Germans had stuck to the original Schlieffen plan and managed to outflank the allies they might very well have captured Paris right at the start.

The Jew-loving Nazis of Scenario 1 seem like a pretty big departure from the Nazis we know and love, but yes, if the Germans had got the bomb things would have worked out differently.

I don't buy Scenario 2. The loss of Britain would have made bombing Germany difficult, not impossible. Worst-case scenario is that they have to develop a long-range bomber. More likely they'd have invaded some part of Europe or North Africa (most likely Britain itself) as a first order of business upon entering the war -- I doubt they would have made it to 1945 without a well-defended slice of Europe. Of course this scenario probably also has a non-negligible Luftwaffe defending German cities in 1945 but, heck, the nukes have gotta get through eventually.

I'm not sure your second scenario is as quickly solvable as you think. The loss of the uk would have been the loss of an important strategic platform - essentially allowing a second front to squeeze Germany from when it came to attack. Also it would have given Germany pretty consolidated control of our side of the North Atlantic, supply routes would have been severely disrupted.

I think ultimatelythe war would have been won but redeploying to, say, North Afric would have taken a while.

Depends on which kind of facts you are prepared to alter. E.g. you could construct scenarios where Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack each other. Or where the U.S. would not enter the war.

That's right -- you'd have to change something big -- ie the identities of the belligerents -- or to give the nuclear bomb to Germany. But you can't reverse the outcome by changing something small (like Enigma or the weather in Russia).

No offence to Turing et al, of course -- they still saved gazillions of lives.

The weather in Russia is by no means something that I would call "small." It helped the Russians defeat Napoleon in 1812.

When the Germans invaded, they were ill-prepared as well. They're vehicles couldn't cope with the cold, so in the winter months, they were bombarded by Soviet bombers but couldn't get any of their own planes in the air. They couldn't move vehicles because the ground turns to mud (they ended up using dead bodies to gain traction). At one point, the Germans were very close to Moscow (within visual distance IIRC) when winter hit. That winter, fresh troops from Siberia who were specially trained for winter warfare arrived in Moscow to push the Germans back. I think it's safe to say that the Russian winter prevented the Germans from capturing Moscow that winter.

My favorite podcast (Dan Carlin's Hardcore History) covered the eastern front of WWII in a four-part series, titled "Ghosts of the Ostfront": http://bit.ly/W4ig (episodes 27-30). I highly recommend it to anyone that's interested in history.

(That's not an affiliate link, btw.)

That four part series is stunningly good. Even if you aren't interested in history very much, give it a go.

Here's Napoleon's cartographer's view of the Russian expedition, atop google maps: http://hci.stanford.edu/jheer/files/zoo/ex/maps/napoleon.htm...

Wikipedia has the original: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Minard.pn...

  E.g. you could construct scenarios where Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack each other.

Easy, decisive German victory, because there would be no Eastern front. The Eastern Front was by far the largest, by whatever measure you care to choose: German casualties (more than half), total military casualties, total civilian casualties, materiel losses.

Historians are finally shedding the Hollywood propaganda and calling it "arguably the single most decisive component of World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for Germany's defeat." (Bellamy, Chris - Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War) Also see Wikipedia's page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com