There are many fictional stories where Germany or Germany and Japan win World War 2. The stories usually ignore how this happens or give a few sentence reason like the Germans develop the A-bomb first.
There are other exercises in alternate history where people try to analyze the real history and try to find battles or turning point events where the Germans and Japanese win critical battles.
There is a scenario where the Germans attack without delay and effectively to prevent the evacuation of 400,000 British troops from Dunkirk. This scenario ignores that Germany logistics were stretched by the surprising speed and success of their encirclement and defeat of the main French army. The Germans had a multi-day traffic jam as they were moving across France.
France overcommitted its best troops into Belgium and the Germans went through the Ardens. There is clear evidence that in head to head battles the French did well. The French and British troops would have been able to hold a longer assault at Dunkirk.
The French and British troops holding off the Germans for the Dunkirk evacuation were dug in for urban warfare. There was no encirclement. Many later battles in WW2 lasted for months with urban warfare.
What if the Germans had turned toward the Middle East instead of the Soviet Union? What if the Germans won at Stalingrad? What if Russia lost Moscow?
The Germans were massively short of oil. The US had about 80% of the oil in the world. In Europe-Asia, Russia had about 70% of the remaining 20% of the oil. The Germans would have had to win Stalingrad and captured and kept the oil in Caucuses. This would have prolonged the war.
However, US lend-lease was providing oil, trucks and other material for the Soviets. The Soviets would still have mounted their counter-offensive. The Soviets were making good enough tanks in vastly larger numbers. The Germans winning at Stalingrad might have allowed them to avoid the Soviet encirclement. However, the Soviets would still have won one year later.
The scenarios for German or Japanese victory would have to address:
* the US had 80% of the world’s oil
* the US had higher octane fuel which enables planes that are 10% faster
* the US had a vastly larger economy and can outproduce the Germans and the Japanese combined
* the Allies had broken German and Japanese codes by 1939-1940
* the US had 27 aircraft carriers in 1945 and 70% of the large Navy ships in the world.
By war’s end in 1945, the United States Navy had added nearly 1,200 major combatant ships, including twenty-seven aircraft carriers, eight “fast” battleships, and ten prewar “old” battleships totaling over 70% of the world’s total numbers and total tonnage of naval vessels of 1,000 tons or greater. 143 aircraft carriers including conversions and the training carriers were completed prior to the end of WW2.
The US was building dozens of additional aircraft carriers in 1945. A longer war would have meant the US would have scaled up to hundreds of aircraft carriers.
The Japanese lost the battle of Midway and could not recover naval capability, while the US could lose its aircraft carriers at Midway and replace them with new construction within 12 months.
* the US had vast superiority in longer-range four-engine bombers. They had thousands at the end of the war and again the US was building a lot more. The nuclear bombs took out cities but waves of long-range conventional bombers fire-bombed Tokyo and Dresden. It would just take one or two weeks for the bomber fleets to destroy a city.
* The allies were able to put together a successful sea-lift amphibious assault on D-Day that took a couple of years of preparation, construction, planning and effort. The Germans and Japanese had nowhere near this capability. They could not assault and bring the war to the US. The Germans could not even successfully invade across the English Channel.
* Churchill and Stalin did not surrender and would not have surrendered.
* the US had the population to mobilize an army four times larger than the troops that were mobilized.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I understand Dr Morell was keeping Adolf well sozzled on cocaine, or was it amphetamines? Anyway, suppose he had a rush of brains to the head just after Pearl Harbour and persuaded Hitler to send Ribbentrop to the US on the Graf Zeppelin to offer to mediate between the US and Japan, and just accidentally let the media know that Adolf was willing to renew his 1940 peace offer to Britain, and join with the UK and the US to fight the ‘lacquered monkeys’ of Japan.
After all, the US didn’t declare war on Germany, Germany declared war on the US. The Japs didn’t declare war on Russia, although their German ally was fighting the Soviets. If Hitler hadn’t been so busy micro-managing his invasion of Russia, he could have seen that the US was at least as plausible an ally for Germany as Stalin, and given diplomacy a go.
After all, the Nazi-Soviet pact worked till Hitler broke it. Perhaps the Nazi-US pact might have worked for a time.
The Sinai part of Egypt is in the Middle East
after you have studied physics and biology like I have you may repat you utterly dumb remark.
The only quasi-realistic scenario I’ve heard is the Germans act like liberators in Ukraine & the Baltics instead of being bigger assholes than Stalin. That probably leads to capture of Grozny in ’42 but I still don’t buy that they win the war. Once they went into the USSR, total victory was the only winning outcome; any uneasy truce on a 2000 mile border would mean eventual defeat as long as the US was still supplying the Soviets. The Red Army got much better equipped and staffed in 42 and 43 and the Americans were committed to supplying them; even without the Caucasus oil they’re still close in summer ’43 to what the Germans faced at Kursk. They need to capture another 1000 miles and set up a defensive line at the Urals and Caspian Sea. By then it’s early 1944 at least and you have a 2nd front in Italy – admittedly a dead end due to the Alps but still something you need to defend. Maybe they could push into Kazakhstan and rout what’s left of the Red Army in Summer 1944, but by then D-Day is happening, and the Mediterranean, Dardanelles, and Caucasus fronts are vulnerable. Any truce with the Soviets would be uneasy and require significant garrisoning to maintain. There’s no way.
Jim,
How can you question Sam having access to super advanced technology when he has been able to make billions using such tech to outcompete the stupid, close-minded stick-in-the-muds at Boeing and Lockheed?
If he really was just making all this up then he’d be some nobody on the internet instead of a world famous billionaire.
The mere fact that all know Sam as the guy who out-competed SpaceX and Tesla proves he is correct.
These days when someone says ‘there is plenty of evidence’ but doesn’t post a link I dismiss them as to lazy to provide the evidence.
Agreed, their research would not have produced and explosive a-bomb. But they could have produced what we now call a dirty bomb, a standard explosive encased in deadly radioactive material that would have been spread far and wide by the explosion. It would have sickened enemy troops and civilians and caused mass death within weeks. It would have bee very useful against Russian spearheads, the Allied beachhead at Normandy and against London.
The war was essentially won and lost in the Caucasus, the largest oil producing area outside of the US in the 1940s. Had Germany been able to seize these oil fields and simultaneously deny them to the Soviets, Germany would no longer be short of oil and the Red Army would have to fight on foot and the Red Air force would be grounded due to lack of oil. Without oil the Russians never could have launched a counter attack let alone advance to Berlin.
While a German advance to the Urals was a logistical fantasy, a stalemate on the Eastern front that left Germany in control of the Baltics, Belorussia, Ukraine and Caucasus is as good as a win for Germany. With a stalemate and possibly a separate peace in the east, the Germans could have tripled the number of divisions defending the Atlantic wall, making D-Day almost impossible.
Affinity to hoaxes does not substitute learning science.
I agree with Sam that there is a lot of stuff he talks about that does not exist.
Axis also controlled Syria and Lebanon, and were briefly allied with Iraq.
I think they count as Middle East.
The Mongols were allied with the Russians at this point, and indeed had a fair number of troops fighting the original Japanese attempt to move into Russian territory.
There is plenty, I’d even say overhwelming evidence for all I am stating but it would require willingness to look at it. your reply shows you are not because even simple google could have pointed the way. also Heim published in German only. If you can bring your limited horizon to consider other sources I suggest Richard Dolans work for the beginner.
Egypt is in Africa not the Middle East
All you needed for Japan to invade USSR was an army komakozzi Ninja warriors with machine guns riding Mongolian horses… that’s how genghis khan did It old world style… you just rip out their guts and sew them to the horse and tell the, no return without honor!! Hi!
What if hitler were adopted by a jewish family after his father left and his mother died of consumption, then his jewish mother changed his last name from hitler to goldberg, and he grewup and he got a job deliverying mail in a jewish investment bank, until one day he found somebody handing out the elder protocals of zion pamplets on the street in munich, then he took the pamplet to his rabbi to show him…. then the marxist over threw government of germany and took back the banking institutions from the zionist pigs of capitolism… and the angry communist had daily executions in the public square of zionist pig capitolist and their Bourgeoisie family members…
How about alternative history where japan decides not to bomb perl harbor..then crushes china and invades russia… the full force of the US and britsh troops march to moscow to repell the japanease…after defeating germany.. a new cold war last many years between japanise empire and us allies but ultimately the chinese win freedom from japan because they have cronavirus that they transfer to fleas and release in japanese jade garden zones in china.. except now the chinese nolonger speak chinese because the japanese creolized their language with pigan japanese and manchuian, and maozedong was never able to lead commie revolution in china but instead is a bald middle aged homeless chinese guy frying noodles from a street cart.. thats how i end the movie…”maozedung may i have a bowl of your special hot and spicy noodles…” of course mao says in japo-manchurian to the friendly american….
Germany did invade the middle east…
Dont you ever watch the ww2 tank battle movies of patten vs. Rommel
https://xkcd.com/1013/
The Japanese didn’t want Siberia – they thought it was too cold for anyone but Russians to live in. Before they invaded China, they attacked an island in the Amur River, on the border with their puppet Manchukuo state, which was claimed by the Soviets. Stalin didn’t react, so they felt safe in going on their Chinese adventure.
It is very strange but Hitler who was a manipulative lier in this case was victim of his straightness. Japan did not do anything for him just for his own goals. If Japan had attacked the soviets then that would have been a real help but attacking the US? Not really wise, not really helpful…
Do not forget about the holocaust. Hitler had no ethical consideration to eliminate people who are in his way.
Berlin and Moscow had signed a non-agression pact what neither of them took seriously. Stalin definietly wanted to attack the third reich, they had operational plans for this goal.
You definietly seem to be led by propaganda. If you had learned physics you would not have claim so nonsense as fusion bomb ignited by conventional explosives.
True!
plus a second night of the long knives after Hitler died .. but to havy ANY chance at all to influence the outcome of WW2 you need to eliminate Gröfaz
Yeah, but that was with decades more advanced technology, and using the nuclear science that had already been worked out by other nations.
Of course there are pure fusion bombs available.
How else do the Nazis living on the dark side of the moon manage to keep the greys and the rigellian flying saucer alliance from conquering the remnants of the atlantis people?
Wake up sheeple!
Unless you can point to some actual *evidence* for any of these claims, then when you say ‘mental flexibility’ I will translate that as ‘gullibility’.
Lets just say there is a LOT Heim invented or developed that officially does not exist today, among them: The unified field theory, faster than light travel, a theory of gravity that would allow anti-gravity. His name was all but erased from history, along with many other items not favorable to our leading elites many of whom are none terrestrial. Although I doubt this forum has the mental flexibility to accept any of the notions I mention. So please continue to believe the history fed to you ….
Lots of amazing comments! All coments show detailled Information about a cruel, but very important global period in history. As I am a German, it’s astonishing to look on your neutral, fact-based attitude towards a subject, which might contain an emotional power leading to hate.
Public discussions in your shown manner are rare in Germany today. I don’t have to explain why, well?
But the overall question of the article can’t be answered. I think, no one is able to do this.
Once the “Deutsches Reich” tried to dominate the continent and more. Many germans believed in it, so I hear the historians of today. My father did not, but my mother. In recent times the situation has changed. Others try to dominate us Germans in our own country. We are betrayed by some globalists, communists and – last but not least – attacked by the influence of Islam.
Adolf Hitler an other Nazi-leaders liked islam, especially the adjectives of Dschihad. So a historical ring closes in a very strange way.
Let’s look into the future of technology and human society. Together, here and elsewhere.
Brian, your blog is great!
The empire would have collapsed soon after though.
The article focuses a lot on technology but ignores one very important aspect: Demographics. In the age of colonization, small countries were able to control large empires. This was possible because of an exploding population, angry young men that could not find a place in society and tried their luck abroad. They were cheap and expendable. For the opposite reason, the US are loosing in Afghanistan and Iraq. US has technological superiority, but US families only sons are put against 3rd or 4th sons of those countrys.
The 2nd world war was still planned as a classical expansion war – the idea was to wipe the eastern countrys and colonize them. But birth rate dropped in the decade before so this was not going to happen.
“FUSION bomb which could be ignited with conventional explosives”
The fact that nobody has done this yet strongly suggests that it is not possible.
The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick started the genre. He was correct about the battle of Cairo. The Great Rabbis called for 3 days of events against the Nazi inferno: including a day of fast and prayer, a day of cessation from work and a public protest assembly in 1942. Because of the 3 days of Prayers and Fasting in the Yishuv (Eretz Israel),This was prevented: From Wikipedia, Egypt during World War II
 The German’s strategic goal of slicing through Egypt, capturing the Suez Canal, enter the British Mandate of Palestine, activate an Arab uprising against the British [with the help of The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammad Amin al-Husayni uncle to Yasser Arafat of the PLO –Ed:], and finally link up with German forces thrusting south from Southern Russia was stopped.
Hitler’s decision to abandon the battle of Britain and turn towards Moscow is a baffling historical event (there were others). Had Hitler succeeded in Britain then the D-Day invasion at Normandy would have never occurred for lack of a launching pad and with control of England and Norway. And assuming the Brits would had scuttled or withdrawn their Navy from the British Isles, Hitler could then have further disrupted the convoys of American Cash-n-Carry and Lend Lease manufacturing machinery and supplies being shipped to Russia to partly cripple her industry.
Sot the question that linger’s is why did Hitler turn towards Moscow precisely when he did? Granted he is said to have hated the Communist, but Berlin and Moscow had signed a non-agression pact, the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact, and Germany was the bitter veteran of a previous 2 front war and it would go against even Hitler’s seemingly irrational logic to
and turn on his ally mid-stream in battle with England.
Was it because Hitler didn’t want the Luftwaffe to be further decimated over the British Channel, or could it be that he was equally distrustful of his other ally Japan and rightly concerned that if he didn’t conquer and militarize Russia, China and India’s neighbor to the north, then Japan’s full conquest and subsequent industrialization and militarization of China would make any achievements in Europe irrelevant since a Nippo-Sino army could march on India and the oil fields of the ME and onward to Europe?
IMO there is exactly one and only one scenario where Germany with the “man of the year 1936” at the helm could have won the British instigated war. Too many here believe their own propaganda and have not researched historic sources to any extend. Had Hitler not fallen for the BRITISH trap that lead to the attack on Poland and had Heisenberg listened to Burkhard Heim who told him in 1943 how to built a FUSION bomb which could be ignited with conventional explosives thereby making the entire Uranium/Plutonium shebang unnecessary and had von Braun had 2 more years to deliver a reliable unmanned delivery mechanism (although perceivably high flying jet driven bombers might have taken that role) THEN and only THEN Germany would have had a SMALL chance to win that war which was NOT a war between nation states but a war of the international banking cartel against a Germany that was on its way to make them superfluous. However it is highly doubtful that Germany could have lasted in those defeated countries as occupying force for any length of time due to lack of manpower. It is a different story to occupy France which is of the same size as Germany or the USA and/or Russia. The best they could have hoped for was to gain and keep nuclear supremacy which would probably have made any future attack on the fatherland improbable.
These arguments all depend on having the US in the war with Germany. After Pearl Harbor though, Hitler declared war on the US honoring his treaty with Japan. Simply suppose he chooses to break the treaty. He makes a speech attacking Japan in typical Nazi racist terms and for the dishonorable act of attacking before declaring war. He praises the US and declares solidarity. Could FDR and Churchill have brought the US into the war against Germany anyway? Unlikely.
In the actual history, Hitler was so focused on the Soviet front he didn’t care about what would happen years later and he hoped to get Japan to attack the USSR from the Pacific (which never happened anyway).
Hitler can then make a deal to end the War with Churchill and focus all German efforts on the eastern front.
Agree with everything you said, but it goes back to what the Japanese war aims were. And they were quite divergent from the Germans. They wanted to build an self-sufficient empire, given geography and known oil sources in the Dutch East Indies, they needed ships, airplanes and infantry to conquer the area. They had no strategic interest in Siberia and all the tech transfers the Germans could have done, wouldn’t have paid for their losses in tangling with Russia.
Actually the old Avalon Hill game Third Reich addressed this point rather well. In order to win, the Germans needed to knock out the allied economies. They could never reach the US, so they needed to concentrate on either the British or the Russians. Had they been able to get either Franco in to close down Gibraltar- which would have made Malta untenable, opening the supply routes to Africa for the Italians and the Afrika Korps OR get Turkey in enabling them to obtain the Caucasus oilfields directly, closing down the Iranian Lend Lease line, getting between the armies and the trans-Ural factories supplying them and enabling them to attack up the rivers rather than over them on their march to Moscow.
Still wouldn’t bet a single Reichmark on their winning.
This is true. But they had the capacity to develop heavy thanks and also they could have license that from the germans who gave technology to them in other cases.
Yes but it was their decision. We are talking different scenarios. They could have decide to invade Siberia and in this case they would have concentrate their efforts to develop heavy tank instead developing the navy. I know, the navy was privilegized after they won at Chuzima but in the other hand they won at Port Arthur too on landscape so actually the could have privilegized the army too.
The Japanese had already fought the Soviets and didn’t have resources for a rematch. Their army was over extended in China and never did mass produce anything bigger than a medium tank. (Although there may have been a few prototype heavies.)
Let me note that even South-African Republic was able to put together more than ten Hiroshima style (the simple but less efficient canon design) nuclear bomb secretly. Their economy’s size was way smaller than the Third Reich’s.
Japan’s Army did not have the advance tank and mechanized armed forces for a “normal” land invasion of Siberia. Most of their resources were put into the Navy. I don’t think they would have been very successful with an invasion of the of the USSR even after the Soviets pulled out their best troops to fight the Germans.
I’ve doubts the Germans could have put together an effective bomb, just by looking at the sheer scale of the American project. Germany just didn’t have that much spare industrial capacity.
BUT… they could have got usable reactors up and running. That leads to the prospects of nuclear powered subs and ships. And we know that running out of fuel neutralised the big German battleships. And the u-boats were greatly weakened by their reliance on primitive diesel electric drives with WWII era batteries. Nuclear subs doing 25 knots underwater or something would be a complete game changer at the time. Indeed it was decades later.
Nuclear powered ships/subs gives Germany a prospect of winning the battle of the Atlantic. After that, who knows?
My point is that they couldn’t do that. Not in 1939, they had already established relationships where, as Goldfinch points out, the French would step in. To do such an attack would require developing positions as “we are your bulwarks against the communist threat” and start this probably as early as 1930.
It would require Japan NOT looting, raping and burning their way through China. It would require Germany NOT coming off as such violent thugs (though I think that by 1939 they hadn’t actually started internal mass murder or something so they could maybe have got away with it?).
And it would require both groups to behave and communicate in ways that were not just really different from our world, but may have been incompatible with the internal politics that got them to power in the first place. (There was also Italy, but none of the other major nations really hated and feared Italy (according to my somewhat scanty knowledge of the era), they would probably be OK with them as they were)
People have made a strong case the US knew, wanted and needed the attack on pearl harbor. It usually is dismissed as a “conspiracy” theory however a recently declassified memo confirms the first point. Your observations from the family members has been confirmed by other objective sources i.e. “Neutrality Act 1935”, supports the “need.” The “want” is more difficult to prove in a quick post. I would add IF the US had not implemented and embargo against Japan we would not have been attacked.
WOW another virtue signaling fool
No, Stalin was busy doing their job for them and killing his own officers. Dont’ assasinate him.
Lol! Never thought of that. The biggest advantage that the germans could have – Hitler dies.
It was France that declared war on Germany because of the invasion of Poland. Germany would never have been able to attack the USSR without upsetting the french.
America had no intention of joining WW2 but the soviets had. Actually they took attacking position by the border that is why their defense was weak.
“What if Germany and Japan did a joint attack on the USSR, claiming it was a war against the evil communists, didn’t attack anyone else, and actually got some British and US help?”
That was their biggest mistake not doing that.
What if the US had decided to stay out of the war? With the public heavily favoring isolationism, what if Roosevelt’s actions favoring the Allies had lost him the 1940 election, and Wendell Willkie had backed off enough pressure on Japan to avoid Pearl Harbor, and ceased support of Great Britain and Russia.
Without US support, England would probably have had to negotiate a truce with Germany. Knowing Germany could turn all its attention to them, and also lacking US support, Russia likely also would have had to negotiate.
Also we should not forget that the nazis were those who started nuclear bomb researches and this was the main reason that the US started the Manhattan project. Yeah, history was written by the winners but it was not the war of smart heroes versus stupid idiots.
There were two A bomb project in Germany. Heisenbergs built a working nuclear reactor what worked with natural uranium and heavy water (like CANDU nuclear power plant design) and was eventually blocked by the lack of heavy water (because of the attack in Norway we all know of). But if they had had some years more they could have breed enough plutonium to build their own bomb.
The other A Bomb project completed tests in Thuringia and in a Baltic island. It is still not clear that they made only dirty bomb (though these sites are not especially contaminated) or a weak A bomb ( where the chain reaction stops too early because of the poor design) but the tests proves that they were on their good way to develop the bomb.
The key component of the axis lost was that Japan turned to Pacific instead of Soviets. I know Japanese forces lost at Hahlin Gol, but the soviets emptied their far east territory when the Germans raided Moscow and Stalingrad. CCCP’s last chance was transporting Zhukov’s army from Siberia to the German lines and this move opened the way infront of japanese to conquer Siberia. With or without US support the soviets would have lost the war and the most potent force was eliminated.
After this US would have never attack the third reich. They usually rapidly lost their interest in attacking when the opponent is equally strong.
there is a good alternate history book series (falcons of Malta, Deaths on the Nile) out there that adresses many of the points made in this article – the first (necessary) thing that happens in the first book is that Hitler dies shortly after the victory parade in Paris .. you might want to look it up ..
Part of the reason the flu was so deadly was because of the war. Lots of people with no shelter and little food. It is likely it even alters the strains. Mutations which can make younger people very sick might proliferate with so many young soldiers out in the cold muck together, sharing meals…
Would they have known to assassinate Stalin? Probably not. Even if they won Europe, Africa and the Middle East, they could still have easily lost to the Russians later. I tend to think if Germany had not attacked Russia yet done all these other things…they might have been able to coexist. They probably would have had roughly the same military strength, and neither would invade the other if they were realistic. But with 2 nuts in charge…maybe conflict was inevitable. If so, the casualty levels could have been dreadful. The Germans might have drafted and equipped most of the Africans, and Middle Easterners and thrown them at the Russians.
With serious looking efforts to befriend the US and Britain, there is a good chance that the hard-line anti-German British leadership would have lost their elections. Then the British military secrets would have stayed secret from the US for too long. They gave us the magnatron (making radar viable), the jet engine, and a starting point for the bomb. Yes, Einstein wrote a letter, but it was not until we had some good math for a bomb from (the Frisch and Peierls memorandum), we got from the British that we had something to work with. We were trying to make reactors…not bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch%E2%80%93Peierls_memorandum
Einstein thought it had to be huge, only transportable by ship. The amount of rare uranium isotope thought to be required would have been ridiculous for us to try to get with centrifuges. These guys worked out that it did not have to be anywhere near that large…and therefor was viable.
This will sound controversial, but here goes. This is why we should not outlaw and diminish people’s public racism, even though it is repugnant and despicable, 1A covers idiots and distasteful speech. I’m not talking about incitement and the like. Had Hitler hated the Jews, but instead kept them close to his vest and buttered them up, he would have had the bomb, not the U.S., most likely. Instead the U.S. got a lot of really smart people who worked the nuke problem. Racism has a price, usually an economic price. If a restaurant posted a sign which said, “This Color Only, No Other Color Allowed”, how many of the preferred color would eat there? Not many. I think most people are not racist and would punish the restaurant owner by not going in.
No. Things could have played out quite differently had Germany stopped just short of invading Poland and built up their forces for 5 years. They did not even wait 1 year. They hadn’t to that point really shot up much of anything. Their prior invasions were mostly welcomed: The Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. All these areas mostly spoke German. And the other powers were grudgingly accepting these acquisitions. We would not have built up our forces, or it would have been slow, if Germany had made every outward appearance of being satisfied. They also could have done more to make the American public more accepting and less afraid of them. Maybe even relax the Brits. Hide large amounts of weapons, ammunition, and fuel literally underground for those 5 years. They certainly would have had no difficulty taking Europe including England, all Africa, and the Middle East. And they should have kept their deal with the Russians.
With those 5 years they would have had thousands of jet fighters, and hundreds or thousands of hydrogen peroxide subs…and other advanced subs which did not quite make it into the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XVII_submarine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XXI_submarine
They may have improved the rockets as well.
If at some point later they decided to invade Russia…they needed to assassinate Stalin…then do it. No sane leader would bury so many of their own forces to get a few of the opponent’s…like Stalin.
Germany and Japan had already won WW2, right up until Hitler attacked Russia without finishing England or ending the conflict with them as an armistice, and the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor which brought us in. Asia was already under Japan’s thumb, China was all but finished. All of Europe was controlled by Hitler through conquest or treaty with Stalin, and oil could have been obtained through other sources than Russia or Romania if necessary. America had no intention of joining WW2 until we were attacked I have read and confirmed through my relatives who were alive at that time. We still had a bad taste in our mouths from WW1. If Hitler hadn’t succumbed to hubris and Japan’s leadership had listened to Yamamoto the world would be very different today.
There is a good youtube channel called Potential History. Almost exclusively on WWII things and sometimes “what ifs”. He, of course, always states that Germany could NOT win, regardless what the amount of “well, if only” thrown in there. Because, at the end of the day, the Soviets could still hurl reserves at them like they were never going to run out.
But one interesting thing that is mentioned is that the Japanese, to fight a war with a large power [China] picked a fight with an even BIGGER power [the US].
Autism doesn’t come in that level, anymore.
Any story of the Axis winning WW2 has to diverge years before the war to build up enough of a different trajectory.
And the differences build up to the point where you are describing a different war.
eg. What if Germany got nukes in say 1942? Well to do that they would have to not get rid of all their (largely Jewish) physicists in the 1930s. So the insane hatred of our timeline would have to be toned way, way down and now it isn’t the “Germany” that we know of.
What if Germany and Japan did a joint attack on the USSR, claiming it was a war against the evil communists, didn’t attack anyone else, and actually got some British and US help? Once again, that’s not only a different war, but the level of cooperation and diplomacy required speaks to very different actors than what we had.
A much more interesting question to my mind is: What if Germany won World War ONE?
Much closer to reality. We can point to some possible turning points that don’t require miracles.
What if Russia falls and so pulls out 1 year earlier? What if a “Lenin, but French” turned up to coordinate the fairly significant revolutionary movement in the French army? What if a simple torpedo had malfunctioned and not sunk the Lusitania? What if the British fleet blundered into one of the available minefields or torpedo barrage during the battle of Jutland? What if the Spanish flu had hit in 1916?
They don’t all have to happen. Any ONE of those changes could move the needle sufficiently.
I hate these “would have could have” scenarios. They are like a game of chess on a board with undefined sidelines.
Though trying to actually look at some early war decisive scenarios:
Hitler destroys -captures the British forces at Dunkirk. This would probably not have been that difficult because by the time they ended up in Dunkirk they had lost nearly all of their heavy weapons. Then he would have had to win the Battle of Britain, which was close, and could have been done with more persistence. This would have allowed him to invade and most likely defeat the UK before mid 1941.
I doubt the US would have entered the war in Europe if there was no beachhead and nothing left to save.
Hitler could have then postponed his, in any way ill timed, attack on Russia.
With the knowledge of hindsight it is easy to say that they were nuts.
But as I said, in the beginning: who knows what other factors would have come into play
There is a need to add one more factor and that was that Hitler and the Nazis were “nucking futs”.
The Japanese had this idea that they could hit the US with one big blow like they did Russia and that the US would then stay out of the Pacific. So, they shot their load and the US ask if they had anything else. And the answer was no.
And still looses by a huge margin.
The German’s prioritize fighter jet technology. Hitler waits 5 years to start the war with more wonder weapons.