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If Hitler had ten more years to the 1950s?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by dovergunner (U2879723) on Sunday, 30th April 2006

  What would have happerned if hitler waited ten more years to bulid up his armed forces, then started the war in the early 1950s. This would have given hime time to bulid up his navy to combat GB

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  Posted by Scarboro (U2806863) on Sunday, 30th April 2006

  The trouble is that when you climb to power over a pile of bodies, and when you maintain power by turning the people against some of the minorities, you make lots of enemies. The only way to keep yourself safe is to keep your people at war with external enemies. Hitler would have had difficulty keeping Germany together and continuing to build his military had Germany been at peace.
  
  Besides he wrote a book saying he would obtain "lebensraum" by conquering the "untermenschen". Stalin could read. Hitler needed to seize the moment.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Brian

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  Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006

  He didnt think that a war with Britain ws likley until at least 1945. That would give him at last 4 bismark class battleships and 2 even bigger ones that were planned but never fgot off the drawing board. and at least one aircraft carrier.
  
  The above dont worry me. If he'd kept up building more destroyers and U Boats then I get twitchy.
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by stalteriisok (U3212540) on Tuesday, 2nd May 2006

  I presume u mean that apart from the european war everything else happened as it did ? - ie Pearl Harbour happened
  
  if so - the US were on a war footing and were very likely to steam into a conflict on GBs side - in which case - no contest
  he would have had to rethink - and it would have been a bad choice to start a war
  
  ST

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  He didnt think that a war with Britain ws likley until at least 1945 Β 
  
  What makes you think that Hitler wanted a war with GB?

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  Besides he wrote a book saying he would obtain "lebensraum" by conquering the "untermenschen" Β 
  
  I thought that the goal of "lebensraum" was a foreign policy adopted by all of Hitlers predecesors? I was also under the presumption that it was also by conquering lands to the East of Germany; notably Russian territory.
  

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  What would have happerned if hitler waited ten more years to bulid up his armed forces, then started the war in the early 1950s. This would have given hime time to bulid up his navy to combat GB Β 
  
  Interesting question but an error in the initial presumption. Hitler never started the war. WWII was declared by Britain because Hitler had sent his forces into Poland.
  
  It is also very likely that should Hitler have built his own forces up, Britain and her allies would also have used this time to build their own forces to some comparity.
  
  It is also likely that Hitler would have continued with expansion through the East in the quest for "living space".

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  Posted by Idamante (U1894562) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  "I thought that the goal of "lebensraum" was a foreign policy adopted by all of Hitlers predecesors?"
  
  The idea of lebensraum is that every race or nation has to constantly expand its territory at the expense of all the others if it wants to survive. This "social darwinist" view of history, which is found in Mein Kampf, was not part of previous German foreign policy as far as I'm aware.

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  Posted by Idamante (U1894562) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  An important point to bear in mind is that Hitler wanted to achieve complete world domination within his own lifetime and the longer he waited the less chance he had of doing that. (of course in reality it was a totally mad objective and he would never have done it even if he'd lived to be 100)
  
  

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  Posted by deployboy (U3993727) on Wednesday, 17th May 2006

  
  "It is also very likely that should Hitler have built his own forces up, Britain and her allies would also have used this time to build their own forces to some comparity."
  
  This is not quite the case CovTeacher. During the 1930's the sinews if the militerised economy took place in Germany. By 1939 Germany devoted almost a quarter of its national product and more than a quarter of its entire workforce to military production. From the mid-1930's the state sponsered a massive programme of capital investment in military production, more than two-thirds of all German industrail investment was spent on military production. Across Germany sprang the worlds largest aluminium industry, a new iron and steel complex-planned on a scale to eclipse <agnitogorsk, was built from scratch. , the chemical industry began to consttruct whole new plants for the synthetic production of oil and rubber, resourse vital for the military but controlled on the world markets by German adversaries. By 1939 German possessed the kind of military-industrial complex that would be developed by the superpowers in 1945. Its productive potentail was enormous, all the more so when bit bu but Germany assimilated the valuable resources of central Europe - iron ore and machine building in Austria, brown coal (for oil production) and armaments from Czechoslavakia etc.
  On this foundation Hitler hoped to build a military power that could face the prospects of was in the 1940's with every chance of success. In 1938 he approved weapons that would make Germany a first class superpower; anai force of 12,999 modern front line planes; a huge new battlefleet to replace the one scuppered at Scapa Flow, a quantity of explosives almot 3 times that produced at the hieght of Germanys war production in 1918. The development of rockets, jets and new types of nerve gas well advanced. ThatThat war broke out in 1939 cut across all these preparations. Neiterh foundation or superstructure were complete; despite the growth of state planning and control, the transformation of the German economy into the instrument of superpower status wa sslower than expected. If war had not started until the mid-1940's Germany may well have proved unstoppable. In 1939 the whole military-industrial complex was still in the throes of expensive and lengthy construction.
  Your assertion that GB under Chamberlain and her allies would have used their time as constructively is hollow. Chamberlain was reactive and not proactive. Hitler was calling the shots and Chamberlain was dancing to his tune.
  

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  The idea of lebensraum is that every race or nation has to constantly expand its territory at the expense of all the others if it wants to survive. This "social darwinist" view of history, which is found in Mein Kampf, was not part of previous German foreign policy as far as I'm aware Β 
  
  Lebensraum has always been a goal of Germanys because of her position in Europe. Bismarck for instance would speak of conquering the land to the East. Hitler was merely adopting policies that had been sought for generations.

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  An important point to bear in mind is that Hitler wanted to achieve complete world domination within his own lifetime and the longer he waited the less chance he had of doing that. (of course in reality it was a totally mad objective and he would never have done it even if he'd lived to be 100) Β 
  
  Do you have a source for this? The first priority for Hitler was to revise the Versailles Treaty in terms of the territorial aspects of the policy. Hitler had, in reality, only taken lands leading up to WWII that had been taken from Germany in the "peace settlement". There is also sufficient evidence that once Hitler had been satisfied with the goal of attaining the required living space in the East, and also regained her lost territories, then he would have stopped there. Read the Hossbach Memorandum for some evidence on this.

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  You seem to forget that the war of 1939 did not actually begin until 7 months after it was declared to which, I concede, dubious decision making by Chamberlain. I do not for a minute think he was cut out for being a wartime PM.
  
  Yet, Churchills appointment was entirely different. He was in favour of the military rearming to its back teeth.
  
  There is no doubt in my mind that should war have been declared earlier it would have served to Hitlers advantage more than a later one.
  
  I suppose I should give reasons for why I think this!
  
  The "New Deal" approach to the German economy which formulated the "Reichsarbeitsdienst" caused the fiscal budgets of Germany to drop into a "war economy". It can be argued that the wasteful nature of much of military spending eventually can hurt technological progress. There is little doubt that a war economy is unsustainable over a long period of time which is why I believe that Hitler would not have any real advantage say war was delayed for 10 years.
  
  Britain had the resources of her Empire to use and although there was violent conflagrations within this Empire due to nationalism, she still had massive resources and raw materials with which to rearm fully. Therefore, owing to Germanys restricted resources and the war economy theory and Britains seemingly infinite base for the rearming effort, I feel that Hitler would have not been in a better position had war been delayed.

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  Posted by mordkessel (U4008677) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  If he had 10 more years and had continued his technalogical progress and developed the Vi V3 rocket, developed the atom bomb plus the long range bomber that had been developed in the 30's there would have been a very different outcome.

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  Posted by Idamante (U1894562) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  CovTeacher I dont know why you are so determined to believe that Hitler was just carrying on the usual policy of German political leaders. Neither Bismarck nor Frederick had a lebensraum policy, nor were they bent on world domination or even the conquest of Russia (if you have evidence to the contrary, let's see it)

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Thursday, 18th May 2006

  CovTeacher I dont know why you are so determined to believe that Hitler was just carrying on the usual policy of German political leaders. Neither Bismarck nor Frederick had a lebensraum policy, nor were they bent on world domination or even the conquest of Russia (if you have evidence to the contrary, let's see it) Β 
  
  Ok...
  
  1/ John Hiden has suggested, German leaders during the First World War 'followed an expansionist policy in the East primarily to help them preserve a conservative reactionary status quo'
  
  2/ Geoff (EDT) Eley, James (EDT) Retall, James N. Retallack all refer to Bismarcks "economic imperialism" and "migrationist colonialism"
  
  3/ Bismarck, though he considered expansion a potential blunder, realised that Germany was a "saturated nation" (Metapolitics by Peter Vireck)
  
  4/ Operation Barbarossa - Andrew Mineau. Expresses the facts that Bismarck was determined not to allow Russia to fall outside of the security aims of Germany. In 1879 it was proposed that Russia was sufficiently backward enough to allow German expansion via a hostile military campaign. However, it was rejected because France was too powerful on the Western borders to allow Germany to complete such a mission. If France was weak at this time, you can bet that the opportunity would have been taken.
  
  I have provided four examples... I invite you to express your own.
  
  I do not think for one moment that Hitler did not expand these "lebensraum" efforts to that of a nationalist purge. However, he was indeed acting from a broad sheet of realities that Germany was not capable of supporting her people.
  

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  Posted by Idamante (U1894562) on Sunday, 28th May 2006

  but none of these - except maybe the world war I case -are lebensraum as Ive defined it

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  Posted by nuneatonguitarplayer (U2327933) on Monday, 29th May 2006

  but none of these - except maybe the world war I case -are lebensraum as Ive defined it Β 
  
  Ok, so we shall modify a very well defined objective to fit your own theory then? Lebensraum is just "living space". The potential policies of Mein Kampf are along the lines of lebensraum as determined from the expansionist policies of Hitler predecessors but you have to bear in mind that Hitlers was tinged with revenge for the Versailles Treaty and reclaiming what had been taken.
  
  Perhaps you are confused between "lebensraum" and Hitler's "weltanschauung"?

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  Posted by DaveMBA (U1360771) on Monday, 29th May 2006

  Deployboy makes a goopd case on the development of the German economy, but the underlying factor is ultimately finance. You have to devote a certain part of your economy to wealth creation. otherwise you cannot sustain your economy. Hitler borrowed massively, although there was only limited use of the banknote printers due to German inflation under Weimar (it is the same model as Napoleon's). To sustain this, you have to somehow pay your debts, which means using your military potential to grab resources n the short term. Thus Hitler, like Napoleon, locked himself into an economic spiral, which could only have one outcome. As the expansion began, so it created new demand in the economy and so in the short term, you get economic growth, but when you suffer defeat or are reduced to garrisoning your possessions, you still have huge costs, which cannot be met. The obvious contrast is Soviet Russia with a similarly large proportion of its economy going on the military. It could be sustained by squeezing the wealth production sector and limiting consumerism, while also enabling gains to be made in key client states. When Gorbachev came to power, he realised that he only ahd two options - a war or giving up the unequal struggle and allowing consumerism to take hold. Fortunately, he chose the latter, but you can see the proud Russian Navy rotting away in all its major ports today.

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  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 29th May 2006

  Dave,
  
  thank you for this interesting message. Heard about the deficit just before the war. Heard also about Hjalmar Schacht (even from my parents in Belgium just after WWII). I thought Schacht was sacked by Hitler. Did some research.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And it all turned down as you said.
  
  BTW. On holidays in Spain I read a French historical novel about the history of French Louisiana connected with the Canadian French presence.
  
  In the book there was a story of an English fortune-hunter who was in the bankingsector and came to the Duke of Orleans?, who was regent for the young Louis? and he started with the aid of the Duke some bonds for the development of New Orleans which caused a real hype and there was indeed a bettering of the economy until it came to a crash and all the investors lost their money.
  
  I will seek for the right details this week borrowing the book again in the library. But it remembered me of the "Mefo's of Hjalmar Schacht.
  
  Warm regards,
  
  Paul.

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  Posted by 1882lillywhite (U3740486) on Wednesday, 31st May 2006

  Don't think its quite as simple as that. If one looks at the events of WWII then the nation that defeated Germany was the Soviet Union. Remove the Soviets from the Allies side and Britain and America would have struggled.

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  Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 31st May 2006

  Dave,
  
  in relation with my last paragraph of "Mefo's" of Hjalmar Schacht I found the link on internet with Lousiana. It was Philippe II d'OrlΓ©ans and the Scottish John Law.
  
  
  
  the book is: "Louisiana" by Michel Peyramaure. I read it in French. I don't know if it is available in English.
  
  Warm regards,
  
  Paul.

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