Historical turning points?

[irocfan]

a few thoughts occurred to me thanks to another thread and I was wondering if others on here had other thoughts and/or explanations.

The initial thought was that Hitler was a necessary evil otherwise by now we could well all be speaking Russian thanks to Joe Stalin. The US would likely not have intervened due to their policy of isolationism until it was too late....

From there as has been mentioned before we come to the issue about how Operation Seelowe would have been an unmitigated cluster-fk for the Germans in 1940, given that Hitler gambled once too many times with his brinksmanship and kick off his war 5 or 6 years early would that extra time have meant Germany could be successful? With their planned naval number at that point as well as (possibly) the Tiger, Panther, Me262, Arado 234 even the V2 or Horten 229 we may well have been toast.

Did General Franco save the war for the Allies? If Spain had walked into Gib as Hitler's ally would we have been able to successfully defend North Africa - could it be said that this one country not joining in had nearly as great an effect as the US helping us? Remember if NA had fallen Hitler would have had as much oil as his ambitions needed...

[Vocal Minority]

In my opinion we didn't win the Battle of Britain, the Germans lost it. If the Germans had secure intelligence networks in this country they would have had better strategic nous. The luftwaffe were poor strategists. (Incidentally by half way through the war Germans intelligence network was either in custody or under British control - not one agent operating freely).

Also, IMHO the turning point in Russia was not Stalingrad, it was the failure of Germany to secure Moscow before the winter - Stalin very nearly abandoned Moscow as well making up his mind to stay as his train stood ready to leave.

Moving away from WW2 - If Nixon, not Kennedy, had won the election, how would he have handled the Cuban Missile Crisis ?

[Poison Tom 96]

Operation Chariot.

Without it Tirpitz would have destroyed many a convoy and turned the war quite possibly.

[Puggit]

Vocal Minority said:

Also, IMHO the turning point in Russia was not Stalingrad, it was the failure of Germany to secure Moscow before the winter - Stalin very nearly abandoned Moscow as well making up his mind to stay as his train stood ready to leave.

But was Stalingrad not the point when the Russian reverse turned in to an attack? There's truth in the fact that Moscow helped - maybe Winter was the turning point!

[Justayellowbadge]

Bletchley.

[Jasandjules]

Had Hitler not stretched himself to attack Russia, I think the outcome could have been rather different.

[944fan]

Justayellowbadge said:

Bletchley.

? Would it still be a st hole if the codes weren't broken there

[Tango13]

Justayellowbadge said:

Bletchley.

Everything electronic including the interweb is a direct result of this single invention.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Invention-That-Changed...

Edited by Tango13 on Thursday 3rd October 18:11

[Rumple]

Poison Tom 96 said:

Operation Chariot.

Without it Tirpitz would have destroyed many a convoy and turned the war quite possibly.

Tirpitz wouldn't have changed anything, it wasn't as invincible as its legend suggests, also the time of the battleship was over.

[Jasandjules]

Operation Market Garden....

[FHCNICK]

Pearl harbour? What if the Japanese had turned all of their attentions on the existing allied forces in the far east rather than bringing the Americans into the conflict. Or perhaps more effective, what if they had concentrated on opening a front against the Soviets?

[grumbledoak]

Hitler was very nearly killed several times before WWII.

With hindsight we should have just agreed a peace treaty with him and kept the Empire as he had hoped. If only he hadn't invaded the Poles!

[SV8Predator]

Jasandjules said:

Had Hitler not stretched himself to attack Russia, I think the outcome could have been rather different.

Come on, not that old chestnut again? We all know that.

Give us a new, fresh opinion based upon your own research.

[gazapc]

Jasandjules said:

Had Hitler not stretched himself to attack Russia, I think the outcome could have been rather different.

Yes, by 1943/4, Stalin's armies would have been rebuilt and ready to attack across (former) Poland. From the start Hitler was trying to indoctrinate the German people into believe slavs were sub human and that Germany needed lebensraum in the east, not to wage war against the Britishers.

Edit: browse alternatehistory.com at your leisure.

[eldar]

Logistics win wars. Fuel, ammunition and people in the right place at the right time. The Germans didn't have enough raw material sources, we had the colonies to supply us.

[Fort Jefferson]

Tango13 said:

Everything electronic including the interweb is a direct result of this single invention.

Is that the first transistor?

[Morningside]

Looks like a magnetron?

[Tango13]

It's a cavity magnetron which allowed the development of centimetric radar which was vital for the defeat of the Axis forces.

The men who worked on radar during WWII went on to invent the transistor, the Maser, the Laser, the digital computor, the modem and the Radiometer.

[rpla102]

Not my own personal opinion, but the telegraph published a article on this in 2012.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9731545/Atomic-...

[rpla102]

Going back to the Russia WW2 theme...you should (if you have twitter) follow Real time WW2 tweets...

This was a game changing attitude:

@RealTimeWWII: German officer Helmuth von Moltke confides doubts about invasion of USSR in his diary: "If we don't succeed this month we'll never succeed."

The abovie is directly in relation to:

@RealTimeWWII: 1 million Germans soldiers & over 1000 tanks now racing for gates of Moscow, hoping to smash Red Army before Russian winter forces a halt.

They didn't succeed!