In 1941 Germany only produced 2,900 tanks a number that increased to 17,300 by 1944! Until the armistice was signed in a French railway carriage on November 11, 1918, Germany's enemies didn't. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, This Is the War Plan America Will Use When It Invades Canada. The animated map below shows the history of the wars in every battle. Yet Germany nearly captured Paris in 1914, crushed Serbia and Romania, bled the French Army until it mutinied, drove Russia out of the war, and then came oh-so-close to victory on the Western Front in 1918. A wave of memorials accompanied and encouraged this collective embrace of the truth. Larger, more elaborate forms of memorialization took shape, as well. It was Britain's Grand Fleet that made possible the blockade that starved Germany of raw materials and especially food, which starved 400,000 Germans to death and sapped civilian and military morale by late 1918. Counterfactual conjecture allows us to see the conflict far more. Without British support, even a Franco-Russian combination would probably have succumbed to German might. Don't Resort to Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. Not surprisingly, an understanding of wars costs has deeply affected contemporary German political culture. The main emphasis has been on seeking strategic and operational surprise to seize the initiative and wage operations deep into an enemy's territory. World War II in Europe was Germany and Italy, which was joined by Finland, Hungary, Romania, and to some extent Bulgaria. German cities had been reduced to rubble, and millions of Germans had died; as a result, everyone could see what Nazism had ultimately led to. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies. Perhaps it is the grim aura of fatalism that discourages speculative history of the Great War. During the Spanish Civil War, which has been called a dress rehearsal for the Second World War, Germany's Luftwaffe perfected its strategy of using dive bombers and close-support attack aircraft. Their love affair across one of the world's most heavily guarded borders had begun on the virtual battlefields of a video game where players bond over having one another's back . Would the Third Reich have triumphed if it had developed jet fighters sooner? Stumbling across history: plaques memorializing Holocaust victims in Berlin, November 2013. In view of the harmless nature of these new functions, it seemed wasteful to demolish the structures that housed them. But its main contribution was provoking the British into regarding Germany as a threat even before the war began. Just what Germany could have accomplishedhad it been able to concentrate on just one frontbecame painfully clear in 1918. An opinion poll carried out in West Germany in 1949 revealed that half the population considered Nazism to be a good idea, badly carried out. In the East, the countrys new Stalinist leaders wanted the public to identify with the memory of the communist resistance to Nazism, which had been real enough, but which the authorities massively exaggerated. But the combatants were not drones or sheep, and the conflict was more than mud, blood and barbed wire. But such aircraft were unable to defeat Great Britain. The landscape of memorialization had thus already changed considerably between the immediate postwar years and the 1980s. Kollwitz's sculpture is meant to represent not only a mother's grief at the loss of her soldier son but also all those non-soldiers caught up in the horrors of war - especially Holocaust victims but also less well-known sufferers, such as the German women who suffered mass sexual violence at the end of WW2. Dozens of books andwargamessuggest how history would have changed if Hitler had invaded Britain or not invaded Russia. What could Germany have bought with the money, material and manpower tied up in the High Seas Fleet? The Atrocities Of The British Empire | Historic Cornwall Perhaps it is the grim aura of fatalism that discourages speculative history of the Great War. If Germany developed the right aircraft the war could have turned out differently, but another factor was its industry. As well as being anti-Islam and anti-immigrant, the AfD denies human influence on climate change, wants to ban same-sex marriage, supports what it calls traditional family values, opposes European integration, and repudiates what it sees as a culture of shame and guilt over the Nazi past in favor of a new sense of national pride. Japan had attacked the United States, so Germany was never required to join with its Axis partner. German surface ships enjoyed better armor plating, guns, propellant and fire control systems than their British rivals. There's a movie for that. Although some members of the city council were keen to dissociate the city from its Nazi links by appealing to a more distant, medieval past, others thought this smacked of dishonesty and deception. Finland was only in the war to fight the Soviet Union, while the same was largely true of Romania and Hungary. Given that fact, it is hard to accept that Australia wasnt technically among the non-winners. Would the Third Reich have triumphed if it had developed jet fighters sooner? In recent decades, however, Germany has accomplished an undeniably impressive feat: a collective acceptance of moral responsibility for the terrible crimes of its recent past. Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. YES, French won at least major war single-handedly prior to 1648. Given that fact, the United Statesshouldtherefore be on the list of nations that hasnt lost a war. Some would say it was inevitable from the very beginning that Germany and Japan would lose the war. Not much. Want to know what happens when a. goes back in time to battle the Japanese fleet at Pearl Harbor? The decisive factors were British capability and determination, but German mistakes, before and during the battle, contributed significantly to the outcome. We have actually won almost all of them. This included such small arms as the MG34, MG42 and the world's first "assault rifle," the StG44. German Chancellor Olaf Schulz's decision to more than double the funding for his country's military has caught not only Europeans, but also Germans by surprise. These lost soldiers could not be commemorated in public as heroes, as the German military were more and more associated with the brutal conquests and war crimes committed by the Nazi regime. "These numbers are not final. By placing them where people would walk over them, the artist intended to remind passersby of the complicity of ordinary Germans in the violence. Still, by the late 1990s, most people in Germany accepted the validity of these accounts, and a majority of Germans had come to believe that their country bore the major responsibility for the extermination of some six million European Jews by the Nazis. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can proudly claim a5-0 recordin major wars fought, not to mention two Palestinian intifadas as well as a series of armed conflicts in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, and in addition, Israel has remained in existence without ever even ceding territory as the result of the war. However, politicians and intellectuals also reached back to older values in their quest to construct a new Germany. While not technically the same government, the Empire of Vietnam was reestablished in 1945 only to be overthrown by the French. After the Nazis took power in 1933 they replaced the day of mourning with a day of commemoration of heroes, the Heldengedenktag. There was mobile warfare in Russia and Poland, amphibious invasions in Turkey and guerrilla campaigns in East Africa. Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world in 1914, behind Britain's Grand Fleet. That was the idea behindGermany'sSchlieffenplan,which called for concentrating on France in the opening days of the conflict while keeping weaker forces in the East. From 1952 onward, a fortified fence separated them; in 1961, the last remaining links were severed with the building of the Berlin Wall. A strategic masterstroke? Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, When it comes to alternative history, the Second World War is king. Read about our approach to external linking. This revolution effectively caused Germany to surrender to the Allies and ended World War One. Has Germany ever won a war? Dozens of books and wargames suggest how history would have changed if Hitler had invaded Britain or not invaded Russia. And that is part of a larger problem. July 6, 2023. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear includingA Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Despite keeping much of their army in France, the Germans were still able to drive Russia out of the war by 1918. Military service in 20th Century Germany is associated with profound shame - focused above all on the victims of Nazi military aggression and the Holocaust. A German machine gunner marching through the Ardennes in December 1944. Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world in 1914, behind Britain's Grand Fleet. Victory for the Allies was never guaranteed, and historians agree there were countless ways Germany could have won the war. "Wrote a farewell letter to Peter," she recorded. From a military perspective, advancing to Belgium was a brilliant move to sidestep north of the French armies and fortifications on the Franco-German border, and then turn south to capture Paris and encircle the French armies from the rear. Without British support, even a Franco-Russian combination would probably have succumbed to German might. On September 3, 1939, in response to Hitler's invasion of Poland, Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war on Germany.. Has Germany ever won a war against Britain? Please enable JavaScript for this site to function properly. What is more, both of those structures were just too useful to eliminate. The argument is made that those werent the same governments and that modern Vietnam isnt the same as the Empire of Vietnam, but the same case could be made for modern Austria or many other nations. 4500 years of Battles in 5 minutes It was Britain's Grand Fleet that made possible the blockade that starved Germany of raw materials and especially food, which starved 400,000 Germans to death and sapped civilian and military morale by late 1918. The AfD enjoys its strongest support in the former East Germany. 2023 BBC. And even the moderate factions leader, Frauke Petry, who has since left the party, showed no reluctance to use Nazi terms that have been more or less anathemas to German politicians since 1945, such as Volk, which means folk, people, or nation but now has strong racist overtones, owing to its usage by the Nazis. RICHARD J. EVANS is Provost of Gresham College, in London, and the author of. Germans ultimately had to confront what the Hitler regime had done in their name. There's a movie for that. Yet, here again is a case of the wrong equipment. Uprising exposes weakness of Putin's rule, says Zelenskiy - as it If the War Goes On: Reflections on War and Politics [1] is a series of essays and other writings by the German-born Swiss author Hermann Hesse. More importantly, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam fought a border war with the Peoples Republic of China in early 1979 and while both sides claimed victory, it was Vietnam that lost territorymore than the U.S. lost in 1973. France had a population of 39 million in 1914, versus Germany's 67 million. The plaques carry the names of the victims and the dates and places of their birth and death. [What please is the last war the U.S. has won? Yet the Russian advance also frightened German Army Chief of StaffHelmuthvonMoltkeinto transferring three corps from France to East Prussia. No country has placed more weight on stability and continuity, a preference expressed most succinctly by Adenauers famous electoral slogan of the 1950s: No experiments! And no European country has been more welcoming to immigrants and refugees, including Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish Gastarbeiter (guest workers) drawn by the economic boom of the 1960s and more than a million refugees from the Middle East and elsewhere looking for a safer and better life who have flooded Germany in recent years. But the combatants were not drones or sheep, and the conflict was more than mud, blood and barbed wire. Many of the most fanatical Nazis did not survive: they either perished in the final conflagration or killed themselves, along with Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and many others, in one of the greatest waves of mass suicide in history, unable to imagine anything beyond the all-encompassing world of the Third Reich, the only thing that gave their lives purpose and meaning. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany fought alongside the United Kingdom and its allies in World War II. This time the focus was on a sculpture from the 1930s by the artist Kthe Kollwitz installed in one of the building's chambers, depicting a woman holding a dead child. by Michael Peck. But this remains a minority view, and significantly, it has not found expression in permanent memorials: indeed, a plan to create a museum in Berlin to commemorate the victims of the expulsion had to be abandoned after protests lodged by the Polish government, in particular. Now Germany faced not just France and Russia, but also the immense military and economic resources of the British Empire. Yet, many of those same lists include Australia as never having lost a war, but that is dubious as Australia also supported the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and disengaged its forces before the bitter end. The sites of former concentration camps were turned into large-scale memorials to the victims, with elaborate exhibitions that now took a more comprehensive approach to their subject, replacing the partial view of the Cold War years. Can 'good cop' Yellen help fix US-China relations? Video Game Love Affair Between Indian and Pakistani Ends in Jail - The In a similar way, its in former East German cities, such as Dresden, that Pegida has staged its most successful demonstrations. Not much. The concentration camps went through a similar series of phases after the war, reflecting changing German attitudes to the Nazi past. Adolf Hitler joined a list of would-be invaders of the British Isles but clearly didn't remember that no one successfully invaded since 1066 when William the Conqueror defeated Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. Or best of all, more U-boats, the one element of German naval strength that did inflict immense damage on the Allies. Evan Evans The United Kingdom once held the world's largest empire. Yet, even that is not without issue due to the fact that Montreal and Quebec, along with much of the eastern part of the country, were once part ofNew Franceand were conquered by the British during the French and Indian Wars of the 1760s. Keeping America out of the war should have been the goal for Germany. Case in point: invading neutral Belgium. Italy was a reliable partner but its army was neither prepared nor even eager for war. Deliberately anonymous and unremarkable new buildings were constructed around the site; today, if visitors manage to find the spot, all they will see is a childrens playground and a parking lot. War graves are central to this, with cemeteries in communities small and large hinting at the scale of the loss. But the buildings encircling the field were preserved, and the arena itself was used for sports practice, camping, and other open-air activities. Of course to counter that argument is the fact that South Korea did send some 320,000 military personnel to Vietnamso lets accept that if the USA and Australia didnt win, then neither did South Korea. Instead, the United States became the arsenal of democracy and Germany's defeat was all but assured. The Neue Wache was both a place to remember victories and generals and a centre of the famous Prussian military machine. It wasntuntil 1945thatthe two Koreascame into existence, but much like with Vietnam it is hard to consider that the nationneverlost a war when its land and people had literally been under the control of another power for decades or longer! Let's look at what might have been. From Nazism to Never Again: How Germany Came to Terms with It's Past Can anyone imagine France alone defeating Germany? Today's Germany has tiptoed only very slowly towards becoming a more "normal" military power, with the Bundeswehr deployed abroad. This is the first in a series of five articles providing critical analysis as to how Germany Might Have Won World War II. The Portal for Public History. There was mobile warfare in Russia and Poland, amphibious invasions in Turkey and guerrilla campaigns in East Africa. They lost 170,000 men to just 12,000 Germans in one of history's most famous battles of encirclement. As for the actual war, America never lost any major battles, while most of the Communist offensives ended in defeat. A strategic masterstroke? It includes the Confederation of the Rhine , the German Confederation , the North German Confederation , the German Empire , the Weimar Republic , Nazi Germany , the German Democratic Republic (DDR, "East Germany") and the present Federal Republic of Germany (BRD, until German reunification in . The threat of right-wing populism in Germany has proved to be far weaker than in a number of other European countries. Yet Germany nearly captured Paris in 1914, crushed Serbia and Romania, bled the French Army until it mutinied, drove Russia out of the war, and then came oh-so-close to victory on the Western Front in 1918. But the new Bundeswehr was intended to be "citizens in uniform", as different as possible from previous German armies, over which a veil was often drawn. After forcing the new Soviet government to sue for peace, the Germans quickly transferred 500,000 troops to France. 2023 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. That was the idea behind Germany's Schlieffen plan, which called for concentrating on France in the opening days of the conflict while keeping weaker forces in the East. Kaiserschlacht("Kaiser's Battle") offensives shattered several British armies and compelled British commander DouglasHaigto warn his troops that their backs were "to the wall." Since the end of the Cold War its work has also included the highly sensitive task of recovering soldiers' remains and maintaining German military cemeteries in parts of Central and Eastern Europe where the most terrible Nazi crimes were committed. Battle of Britain. Britain had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. Yet, the Germans lacked in numerous other ways. That bogged down the men and material that could have been used in the invasion of the Soviet Union. September 1 marked the eightieth anniversary of the . German Empire (1871-1918) Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Nazi Germany (1933-1945) Federal Republic of Germany (1990-present) Military Wiki This reflects the legacy of the communist regimes failure to instill an adequate culture of remembrance in its citizens; former East Germans dont seem to have the same allergy to right-wing extremism that former West Germans have. Hungary - War, Defeat, Renewal | Britannica Coalitions are therefore the norm. Want to know what happens when a Nimitz-class supercarrier goes back in time to battle the Japanese fleet at Pearl Harbor? Such revelations were not uniformly accepted. Reinforcing that is a belief that the ground for Germany's Nazi catastrophe was laid by the militarism of the Prussian state that unified the country in the 19th Century and led it into World. Video, Australians smash Tina Turner dancing world record, who suffered mass sexual violence at the end of WW2, Storm over 'pride in WW2 soldiers' remarks, Viewpoint: Christmas is not for trivialising war, Just Stop Oil deny protesting at Osborne wedding, England win thriller to keep Ashes series alive, France bans buying of fireworks for Bastille Day, Delhi's earliest crimes revealed by 1800s police records, BBC in touch with police over presenter allegations, Elton John ends farewell tour after 52 years of 'pure joy'. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies. The modern Neuengamme prison was closed in 2006. But in 1914, submarines were supposed to surface when attacking merchant ships, and allow the crew and passengers to escape. By doing so it practically ensured defeat. In Nuremberg, for example, there was the roughly seven-square-mile site where the Nazi Party had held huge rallies, one of which was immortalized in Leni Riefenstahls chilling 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will. Armchair historians often like to make jokes about such nations as France, Italy, Austria, and Egypt for being on the losing side in a number of wars. While its militia played a small role in the War of 1812 against the United States, which ended in a draw, Canada didnt actually send its military overseas in a fully-fledged conflict until 1899 during the Second Anglo-Boer War. World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. Case in point: invading neutral Belgium. If the German fleet could not break the British blockade, impose its own blockade of Britain, or enable a German amphibious invasion of England, then what was it good for? Had Germany been on an actual wartime economy from 1939 things could have been vastly different. What could Germany have bought with the money, material and manpower tied up in the High Seas Fleet? The awkwardness of such family conversations is what can make German commemoration of war still so difficult. These memorials serve more than just a symbolic function: in the face of increasingly influential far-right groups and parties that reject contemporary German norms of tolerance, seek an end to what they consider the shaming of Germans, and encourage pernicious forms of historical revisionism, these monuments to the past act as constant, unavoidable, and visceral reminders of the truth. While the United States quickly transitioned to a wartime economy that had companies like IBM making rifles instead of typewriters and GM making tanks instead of cars; Germany was producing consumer goods all the way until 1942 when Albert Speer took over as Minister of Armaments. They arrived too late for Tannenberg, while depriving the Western offensive of vital troops at Germany's best time to overcome France and possibly end the war. More trucks weren't possible again because the nation wasn't on a war economy. by David T. Pyne. That is the spirit of the ceremony and modern day of mourning in which the Prince of Wales is participating. Military Wiki is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. Speaking at the Neue Wache earlier this year, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the end of WW2 marked "the end of National Socialist tyranny, the end of night bombings and death marches, the end of unprecedented German crimes and the Holocaust's breach of civilisation". But a far more dramatic transformation took place following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany in 198990. On the one hand it was described as a memorial to the "victims of fascism" - a fascism the communists claimed they were solely responsible for defeating. Around 20 percent or more of voters in the five states there cast their ballots for the party last fall, in contrast to between seven and 12 percent in the former West German states. The project quickly became popular as a way of memorializing the dead. The key was to defeat France quickly while vast and underdeveloped Russia still mobilized, and then transfer forces by rail to settle accounts with the Tsar. The first time to live, the second time to die." Perhaps if it hadn't wasted time in securing Greece after Italy bungled that invasion, Germany could have launched the invasion of the Soviet Union a bit earlier. And there was discussion about creating a place of national memory similar to the Cenotaph in London. It might not have been easy, but it would have been far easier than fighting on two fronts. The West German authorities themselves launched numerous prosecutions for war crimes, culminating in the trials of Auschwitz camp personnel in 196365. From the late spring to early fall of 1945 Europe saw several large "Victory Parades" that celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War. Here are a few possibilities in which history could have been very different for Germany: If twentieth-century Germany had a tombstone, it would say "This is What Happens to Those Who Fight on Two Fronts". Listed: Countries That Have *Technically* Never Lost a War. As wartime gravestones eloquently testified, many Germans had fought and died for Fhrer and Fatherland. But with the fhrer gone and the fatherland under enemy occupation, there seemed no point in fighting on. The Allies put in place an elaborate program of "denazification, war crimes trials, and reeducation measures that targeted not only former Nazi activists and fellow travelers but also the militaristic beliefs and values that the Allies believed had allowed the Hitler regime to gain support and come to power in the first place. Does Germany ever win a war? :: Heroes & Generals General Gameplay Talk There was another sad example of not learning from history. Nigeria Security Tracker Weekly Update: June 24-30, The Presidents Inbox Recap: The Fourth of July, Cambodia's Sham Election and What Comes Next, Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives, Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading, Six issues a year in print, online, and audio editions. Russia could boast of a population of 167 million people, yet shortages of weapons, supplies and infrastructure rendered it a giant with feet of clay. There was a limit, as well, to what the Allies could achieve in encouraging or forcing the Germans to come to terms with what they had done. The authorities pledged that the facility would be run in accordance with standard legal norms and penal practices, unlike its predecessor. Yet even when the physical damage of the war had been repaired, by the 1960s, many reminders of the Nazi regime persisted in most German cities; quite a few of the physical remains of the Hitler regime proved simply too massive to dismantle easily.