If the Plot to Assassinate Hitler had Succeeded

a reply to: MaxTamesSiva

That Germany had a nuclear weapon is nothing but a fairy tale invented by conspiracy nutters

When Allies overran Germany in 1945 discovered that German scientists were years behind US/GB in nuclear research

Had a rudimentary "URANIUM MACHINE" where cube of uranium were suspended in tank of heavy water to measure reactions

Germany had no working reactors and lacked industrial capacity to extract U 235, it took massive amounts of electrical
power from the Tennessee Valley Authority dams to power Oak Ridge

Also the plutonium reactors at Hanford required massive industrial site powered by dams on Columbia river

Germany had no such capability

Had war dragged on in 1945 , US would have had nuclear weapons by July

First nuclear weapon might have been dropped on German city or on German military base to demonstrate our power

a reply to: AlienView

By June 20th 1944 the war was completely and irrevocably lost. The D-Day landings had been successful, Rome had fallen, the Eastern Front was about to be hit by the hammer blow that was Operation Bagration, which destroyed an entire German army group, the Kriegsmarine was reduced to a handful of vessels and the Luftwaffe was a broken wreck. From a military standpoint Germany was screwed, especially as it was almost entirely out of petrol/gas. No fuel means no tanks, no planes, no nothing. The German Army relied on the humble horse a great deal.
If Hitler had been killed then one of his acolytes like Himmler or Goering would have taken over and the political situation would have been muddied. Few if any world leaders trusted any of the leading Nazis, so it depends what kind of an offer they made. The fact is that the UK and USA had called for unconditional surrender. This was unacceptable for most Germans.
Let's suppose that the Bomb Plot got lucky and that Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering and Bormann were all killed. A military cabal takes over and asks for peace on the Western Front. No, comes back the reply. Surrender.
It all then becomes an issue of what does the military cabal do next? Withdraw to the German border? That would mean a fighting retreat, a very difficult manoeuvre. But more importantly, which German border? The border of 1939? 1938? 1936? What happens in the East? Who gets handed over to the Allies for war crimes like the Holocaust?
I can tell you one thing, Germany was already mission killed as a 'world power' in June 1944. It was just a case of what could be salvaged from the burning wreckage.

Stephen Fry wrote a book in which a time traveller prevented Hitler's birth. A sort of alternative history thing, which i am into:

Wiki: Making Historyen.wikipedia.org...(novel)

The results were disappointing!

Not read it yet, but the synopsis gives the gist of it - spoiler alert, though.

Let me try that link again:

Wiki: Making History

It would have ended exactly the same as WW 1 ended; with Germany surrendering unconditionally and the Allies imposing a new treaty of Versailles upon them resulting in yet another Nationalist German state. Germany tried to make various peace offers during the war but Churchill and Stalin wouldn't hear of it.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
It would have ended exactly the same as WW 1 ended; with Germany surrendering unconditionally and the Allies imposing a new treaty of Versailles upon them resulting in yet another Nationalist German state. Germany tried to make various peace offers during the war but Churchill and Stalin wouldn't hear of it.

The problem for Germany when those offers were made was that no-one trusted Hitler in any way, shape or form. Why should they have, he broke every treaty that Germany signed after 1933.
Can I just point out that at the end of WW1 Germany did not surrender unconditionally. There was an armistice that Germany requested because it recognised that it had lost the war. It's semantics really, but a valid point.

If it were the Von Stauffenberg plot that was July 1944 by which time the writing was on the wall for Germany.

If the Nazis had been led by someone other than Hitler, who made some catastrophic decisions (what with being drugged to the eyeballs and barking mad with it) who knows what sort of a world we would be living in now?

But then it was his "charisma" that swept them to power.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

Good point. In WW 1 the German soldiers were shocked to learn they had surrendered. Last they knew it was just an armistice. Another reason for bubbling resentment, they felt sold out.

I meant to write that in WW1 Germany had made various peace offers as well. In neither war were the Allies interested in such offers.

originally posted by: oldcarpy
If it were the Von Stauffenberg plot that was July 1944 by which time the writing was on the wall for Germany.

If the Nazis had been led by someone other than Hitler, who made some catastrophic decisions (what with being drugged to the eyeballs and barking mad with it) who knows what sort of a world we would be living in now?

But then it was his "charisma" that swept them to power.

Difficult to say. Apparently the original National Socialist leader, Anton Drexler, was not a very charismatic public speaker at all, so I doubt that he would have filled the void. Perhaps it would have been some other nationalist political party, or coalition of parties. It would be fair to say that history would have been very, very, different.
Plus don't forget that Hitler didn't win a majority in any of the elections of of the Wiemar Republic. It took a catastrophic miscalculation by a bunch of rich nationalists who thought that they could control Hitler to get him into the Chancellor's chair.

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
a reply to: AngryCymraeg

Good point. In WW 1 the German soldiers were shocked to learn they had surrendered. Last they knew it was just an armistice. Another reason for bubbling resentment, they felt sold out.

I meant to write that in WW1 Germany had made various peace offers as well. In neither war were the Allies interested in such offers.

I think that it depends on the soldier. In many places on the Western Front during the Hundred Days Campaign of August-November 1918 there were occasions when German reinforcements were greeted with insults and cries of 'You're prolonging the war!' Certainly Ludendorff had some kind of breakdown after the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, when the front almost collapsed. Yes, many were indeed shocked though, mostly because the German Army was still on French and Belgian soil. If the war had continued for another month or two it's possible that the front might have collapsed completely - or perhaps not. It's complicated.
As for the peace offers no-one was willing to compromise after the hideous losses that had been suffered by all sides by 1916. Germany's peace terms demanded the cessation of Belfort and a military occupation of Belgium, along with the Russian agreement to give up much of Russian Poland. Russia wanted most of German Poland, Constantinople, a chunk of Austrian Galicia and territory in the Caucasus. France wanted Alsace-Lorraine. Stalemate.

By the way, apologies if I get a bit enthusiastic in my answers. I love history and it tends to bring out the hidden lecturer in me.

originally posted by: oldcarpy
Stephen Fry wrote a book in which a time traveller prevented Hitler's birth. A sort of alternative history thing, which i am into:

Wiki: Making Historyen.wikipedia.org...(novel)

The results were disappointing!

Not read it yet, but the synopsis gives the gist of it - spoiler alert, though.

Which is why in my scenario, the worst had happened and Germany actually DID win the war. Our current timeline is the one that was corrected to prevent that, but minimize the side effects by making minor changes during the war to diminish the effect. Large changes such as in Fry's story have massive unintended side effects as he writes (introducing a massive butterfly effect). Making minor changes (such as contradicting a General's orders, or making repeated changes in priority so that no one technology could become advanced enough to provide a military advantage), might result is lesser side effects that the new timeline could better adjust to and be less catastrophic.

IMO, this is one of the big failures of time travel stories. They always try to make massive changes (i.e. kill Hitler, prevent his birth, admit him into the arts program at University, etc). I've never seen one that takes the more realistic approach that Alan Turing and his team needed to take after breaking the Enigma code. By making vast changes, they would have tipped their hat. No, the needed to make small changes, to go unnoticed, to end the war sooner. Many lives had to be sacrificed in that decision, but many more would surely have perished had the Germans knew Enigma was broken, changed the code, preventing allied intercept of their messages.

I do believe that this timeline could easily be explained by the story that it was much worse, until that time traveler replaced Hitler, making minor changes across the board that seem to us to be irrational. However, without those another more competent leader would have emerged (as the original timeline had in their Hitler).

Considering there were something like 42 attempts to kill Hitler, it makes you wonder if maybe time travelers weren't heavily involved in keeping him alive, possibly for the reasons mentioned above where if he was killed somebody much, much worse would have taken his place.

a reply to: Krakatoa

In the end, the reason Hitler's body still to this day cannot be confirmed is that the time traveler returned when in the Bunker. He killed Eva Braun, and the others there. All out of sight of the guards there before returning to the future. The body burned was and Eva Braun and one of the guards that the Russians took for Hitler. A guard that was selected specifically because he was a look-alike to Hitler for that exact purpose in that bunker.

originally posted by: Krakatoa
a reply to: Krakatoa

In the end, the reason Hitler's body still to this day cannot be confirmed is that the time traveler returned when in the Bunker. He killed Eva Braun, and the others there. All out of sight of the guards there before returning to the future. The body burned was and Eva Braun and one of the guards that the Russians took for Hitler. A guard that was selected specifically because he was a look-alike to Hitler for that exact purpose in that bunker.

Maybe these were the same time travelers Mary ran into at Jesus's opened tomb. Maybe they're collecting the bodies for some reason.

a reply to: firerescue

That Germany had a nuclear weapon is nothing but a fairy tale invented by conspiracy nutters

As oppose to the Allied legend? Aren't you even curious in the least that the standard narrative may not be error free?

When Allies overran Germany in 1945 discovered that German scientists were years behind US/GB in nuclear research

Some of the few evidence that were made public were only released after the Reunification of Germany in 1990.

Had a rudimentary "URANIUM MACHINE" where cube of uranium were suspended in tank of heavy water to measure reactions

Germany had no working reactors and lacked industrial capacity to extract U 235, it took massive amounts of electrical power from the Tennessee Valley Authority dams to power Oak Ridge

Also the plutonium reactors at Hanford required massive industrial site powered by dams on Columbia river

Germany had no such capability

Ever heard of AEG's electrical power plant in Sroda Slaska and Lubiaz, Poland? Again, the Farm Hall Transcripts were only declassified by the British government in 1992. There were a few nuggets there.

Had war dragged on in 1945 , US would have had nuclear weapons by July

First nuclear weapon might have been dropped on German city or on German military base to demonstrate our power

There were 110,000 tons of scientific papers transferred over three months to a center in the United States from Germany, not to mention approximately 225,000 volumes of records of the German Patent Office found buried 1,500 feet underground in a potash mine near Bacha after the war.

Do you honestly think these records are available to the public today? If these records are all open to the public, will you be willing to sift through them?

a reply to: MaxTamesSiva

Documents do not make up a working nuclear reactor - which, once again, the Germans did not have. They rejected the basic physics behind the bomb because it came from Albert Einstein and was therefore 'Jewish physics'. Furthermore they massively overestimated how much material it would take to make a bomb, as we know from the Farm Hall transcripts.
I know that there is a tendency to worship the Napkinwaffe but the Germans just did not have the facilities, the science, the leadership or the resources to make a nuclear bomb.

a reply to: AngryCymraeg

Documents do not make up a working nuclear reactor - which, once again, the Germans did not have.

I beg to disagree. The paper trail tells a lot that something did exist and that an event did happened- documents like reports, plans, blueprints, technical calculations, memos and requests for budget and personnel etc., even interrogation transcripts. Aren't documents primary sources for research?

They rejected the basic physics behind the bomb because it came from Albert Einstein and was therefore 'Jewish physics'. Furthermore they massively overestimated how much material it would take to make a bomb, as we know from the Farm Hall transcripts.

Of course, Einstein gets all the credit. Heisenberg et al were all second stringers... and speaking of the Farm Hall transcripts, did Heisenberg and the rest of Hitler's Uranium Club members not aware that they were being observed... I mean, recorded? (Wink, wink)... I guess they were not, after all, they were all dumb second stringers incapable of enriching uranium isotopes using tunable gas laser (yes, laser) made by IG Farben and making infrared proximity fuses that fires 1/3000 per second to trigger fission reaction... what a sorry bunch of nitwits!

I know that there is a tendency to worship the Napkinwaffe but the Germans just did not have the facilities, the science, the leadership or the resources to make a nuclear bomb.

A tendency to worship? Wow! So a predilection to question the standard narrative makes one a Nazi fanboy? Did I get it right?... well, as George Orwell said in 1984:

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”


Lighten up, this thread after all, is not about historical accuracy... or is it?

a reply to: Asktheanimals

The 1941 peace offers included the Third Reich retaining supremacy over the bulk of Europe with Britain being left alone...arguably isolated and vulnerable. It wasn't like Germany were offering to withdraw to within their own borders.

I'm all in with you regarding the Treaty of V being one of the root causes behind the direction Germany went in. We're probably at odds regarding the level of accountability you seem to give the Germans.

The biggest problem I've had with Hitler and the Germanic people as a whole is that he somehow changed them from being a generally peace loving people into what they became during World War 2. This doesn't make any sense. One man can't turn a whole country into a war-mongering group unless it's always been there.

The Germans have been allowed to pass the buck onto Hitler for their collective actions during WW2. In order for all of the horrendous things that were allowed to happen in Germany during Hitler's rein there needed to be at the very least the acceptance of the populace. There is plenty of footage of Germans after Berlin was taken talking about how the dream was now over and everything was in ruins. They were upset that Hitler's promises weren't met!

It takes a nation to achieve something like WW2, not one man. If it wasn't Hitler it would have been someone else.