WW2 Luftwaffe - what if strategic vision had prevailed?

[tomo pauk]

To try to bring this back to bombers while I believe Germany did get its bomber strategy wrong once the war started by trying to make a heavy bomber do medium bomber stuff and building obsolete models long after they should have been displaced by a newer, better model following a better strategy in this regard is only putting lipstick on a pig. Nazi Germany's fundamental 'problem' is that their war aim of total conquest of the Soviet Union, genociding 20-30 million people and enslaving the rest is psychotic on the face of it. There is no negotiated settlement/territorial concession/reparations combination compatible with this war aim and therefore no zig or zag or better bomber production or jet fighter strategy will yield an acceptable result to either side.

Germany in ww2 zigged into Poland with their military, and then zagged into the North and West. Unlike the Imperial Germany, they made peace, and the peace they wanted, in the East and in the West, bar with UK.

As for the bombers, indeed the, nominally, second generation of the German bombers ranged between god-awful and useful. Too much depended on one type of engine (Jumo 222 for the Ju 288, the W24 engines for the He 177), and when these engines flopped or went into host of problems, the respective bombers' designs were in deep problems.

"Second generation" of the German bombers, if it featured the Do 217 being designed as a 4-engined bomber from the get-go, and the Ju 288 as a twin around the most powerful engines (BMW 801; if/when something better arrives - okay) would've probably gave them better bang for buck. The He 111 get phased off. Ju 88 also after a couple of years. If/when the next gen can be made - again, okay.
What will the LW also need is a proper escort fighter - German bombers were rangy even during the BoB, the lack of good escort was a problem.

To revert to the zig-zag - a ww2 that has UK in good shape, Germany is still in war with Soviet Union, and USA is more or less helping the two German adversaroies will still go badly for Germany.

 

[Colonial-Marine]

By the spring of 1915 if there was still somewhere on the Western Front where the Germans could maneuver and outflank the French I'm sure the general staff would have been delighted to hear it. The best they could really do was hold ground in the west while focusing on what could be done with the situation in the east.

By the end of 1940 the Germans are in a much more advantageous position having defeated Poland and France and possessing Czechoslovakia, but there are still great risks. What to do and how much time do they have to do it? The UK is stubbornly still in the war and the idea the Luftwaffe would knock them out of it (or enable a successful Operation Sealion) had fallen apart. The big question is what to do about the Soviet Union? War with them is certainly evitable at some point, the more time passes the more their military is strengthened and recovering from the worst effects of Stalin's purges.

 

[Rule of cool]

To revert to the zig-zag - a ww2 that has UK in good shape, Germany is still in war with Soviet Union, and USA is more or less helping the two German adversaroies will still go badly for Germany.

Capturing Malta or Stalingrad in 1942 isn't going to get the British or Soviets to surrender at all, but capturing Pas De Calais in 1914 and/or Riga in 1915 would materially change the strategic situation in Germany's favour in the long term. Even as late as 1918 going with Operation George instead of Micheal could have drastically changed the war in Germany's favour.

This is why, as much as WW2 jet fighters, aircraft carriers, heavy bombers, tank guns etc fascinate me they're the sauce on cheap, crappy meat. WW2 is awesome at the technological level but boring strategically.

 

[1635yankee]

(while apologizing for a comment that is off-topic, so it will be the last of this kind here)
Germany tried to do that in 1914. They failed. Germany in ww2 actually had a much greater success in capturing of the foreign caountries than the ww1 Germany.

Come 1915, Entente is entrenched in the West, Russia is on the war footing, and war has started vs. Italy. The opportunities for zig-zagging and win the war are fleeting. In the same time, Central powers have lost the access to the foreign supplies, the zero math of whom to feed and who to work on the fields is bad anyway we cut it.

In WW1, the German leadership had two problems, one of which they refused to solve and the other of which the refused to account for. The first was severe decreases in agricultural production due to the loss of imported nitrates, which could have been replace by nitrates produced from ammonia produced by the Haber process; the German government refused to do this, prioritizing ammunition production. This may have avoided several hundred thousand deaths due to malnutrition. Their second problem was that they were very optimistic in the assumption that Ukrainian (especially) food production would solve all their domestic food problems. They underestimated the damage to agricultural production in the countries newly [re]formed from the Russian Empire due to there having been a war fought in one very productive country (Ukraine), where much of the agricultural workforce either left due to conscription (where did the Russian Empire get all those soldiers?) or left because no one in their right mind will stay where there are armies fighting*. The loss due to conscription is something the Germans should have expected; they were having (and apparently ignoring) it domestically, with it being part of the reason Germany wasn't producing enough food to feed its populace.

Germany had a "strategic vision" in both world wars. It's just that its vision in both cases was blinkered by ideology, more so in WW2 (where racial extermination was a war aim) than in WW1 (where they ignored their dependence on overseas supplies).




It's hard to maintain an army in the field when your people at home are literally starving.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Germany in ww2 zigged into Poland with their military, and then zagged into the North and West. Unlike the Imperial Germany, they made peace, and the peace they wanted, in the East and in the West, bar with UK.

As for the bombers, indeed the, nominally, second generation of the German bombers ranged between god-awful and useful. Too much depended on one type of engine (Jumo 222 for the Ju 288, the W24 engines for the He 177), and when these engines flopped or went into host of problems, the respective bombers' designs were in deep problems.

"Second generation" of the German bombers, if it featured the Do 217 being designed as a 4-engined bomber from the get-go, and the Ju 288 as a twin around the most powerful engines (BMW 801; if/when something better arrives - okay) would've probably gave them better bang for buck. The He 111 get phased off. Ju 88 also after a couple of years. If/when the next gen can be made - again, okay.
What will the LW also need is a proper escort fighter - German bombers were rangy even during the BoB, the lack of good escort was a problem.

To revert to the zig-zag - a ww2 that has UK in good shape, Germany is still in war with Soviet Union, and USA is more or less helping the two German adversaroies will still go badly for Germany.

Well, a big part of the problem for the Luftwaffe was they fixated on certain aspects of technology and aerial warfare ignoring others. For example, their fixation on dive bombing as a means to accurately deliver payloads. The assumption that long-range aircraft really weren't necessary as the wars they planned to fight were all 'next door' is another.

With technology it was the same way. Jets were largely ignored early in the war as was radar. Yes, the Germans had the latter but really hadn't figured out a good use for it beyond gun laying. They wanted cutting edge, and beyond, systems on aircraft even as most of this stuff failed to materialize and was beyond their capacity to get it to work as advertised.

Wanting twin engine heavy bombers and refusing to go to a four-engine design early on was a mistake.

Sure, the Allies made mistakes too, but they had more room for error than the Germans did.

 

[swerve]

In WW1, the German leadership had two problems, one of which they refused to solve and the other of which the refused to account for. The first was severe decreases in agricultural production due to the loss of imported nitrates, which could have been replace by nitrates produced from ammonia produced by the Haber process; the German government refused to do this, prioritizing ammunition production. This may have avoided several hundred thousand deaths due to malnutrition. Their second problem was that they were very optimistic in the assumption that Ukrainian (especially) food production would solve all their domestic food problems. They underestimated the damage to agricultural production in the countries newly [re]formed from the Russian Empire due to there having been a war fought in one very productive country (Ukraine), where much of the agricultural workforce either left due to conscription (where did the Russian Empire get all those soldiers?) or left because no one in their right mind will stay where there are armies fighting*. The loss due to conscription is something the Germans should have expected; they were having (and apparently ignoring) it domestically, with it being part of the reason Germany wasn't producing enough food to feed its populace.

Germany had a "strategic vision" in both world wars. It's just that its vision in both cases was blinkered by ideology, more so in WW2 (where racial extermination was a war aim) than in WW1 (where they ignored their dependence on overseas supplies).


It's hard to maintain an army in the field when your people at home are literally starving.

The German army in WW1 operated to a great degree independently & had no understanding of economics at all, e.g. it conscripted men who were needed to produce the food, weapons etc. the army needed to function. It assumed the war would be short & victorious, as in 1870, & didn't really have a Plan B. That came back to bite them later.

In 1939 neither the Wehrmacht nor the Nazis had moved on very far from that. Hjalmar Schacht, who engineered Germany's 1930s economic revival, told Hitler in 1938 that his military spending plans were insupportable & the economy would crash without a change in policy. Hitler sacked him, & he ended up in a concentration camp (he survived). He didn't expect Hitler to pay for a war by fighting it, i.e. looting conquered territories. The WW2 German economy largely depended on transferring productive resources from conquests to Germany, e.g. millions of workers.

It wasn't a viable long-term policy.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Well, a big part of the problem for the Luftwaffe was they fixated on certain aspects of technology and aerial warfare ignoring others. For example, their fixation on dive bombing as a means to accurately deliver payloads. The assumption that long-range aircraft really weren't necessary as the wars they planned to fight were all 'next door' is another.

I mean, WW2 German vehicles, ground and air, were more or less designed around the idea of ~6 months of offensives and then ~6 months of relative lull to send everything back to the factory to be refurbished. And they never asked "what happens if we don't get the 6 month lulls to refurbish?"