Was it ever possible for Germany to win World War II?

When World War II began, Nazi Germany had an unimaginable advantage. For many years, the Nazis were ready for war, but the Allied countries did not know what happened.

If Adolf Hitler was destined to fail and move quickly, then he would never start a military operation. Germany held four trump cards at the beginning of the war, but Hitler's costly decisions in the process turned Germany's advantage into a disadvantage. If they make these decisions in different ways, then the Nazis may win the war.

Germany invaded the United Kingdom instead of the Soviet Union

The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 proved to be a disruption of Hitler ’s military operations. Hitler sent 4.5 million troops to invade a country that signed a non-aggression treaty with him. This was a fatal mistake, because Britain was Germany ’s most painful enemy and was near powerless.

After the defeat of France, Britain made a pragmatic decision to withdraw its troops from France due to a powerful land and air assault from Germany. As the British retreat, they had to leave most of the heavy armory behind them. At the moment Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the British army lacked heavy weapons and automobile transportation. They also lacked operational concepts and experience to resist German invasion.

Hitler made a costly mistake, not to kill. [1] Instead, he chose to contact the Soviet Union, a decision that eased pressure on Britain. This allowed the country to revive the army and continue to fight Germany during the Second World War.

Because Hitler did not prepare for the winter war, the Soviet invasion had a huge impact on the German military machine. The German army never recovered from the Soviet Union's winter counterattack. By the end of 1942, the Germans were fighting defensively in the Soviet Union.

9

Germany has not declared a war against the United States

During World War II, a huge mistake of Nazi Germany was to declare war on the United States. If Germany acts cautiously in this regard, the United States may not formally declare war on Germany.

Even if the US finally did so, it might be much later, and the Germans could have given themselves enough time to fight the enemy. Some historians believe that although Germany and the United States are informally at war, if Germany does not explicitly declare war on the United States, then Americans may not be fully committed to war in Europe.

For the same reason, the torch operation of the Allied invasion of North Africa (controlled by the axis) may be carried out with the least involvement of the United States. This will bring more time to the Germans and may make changes for the Nazis. [2]

8

No massacre

The massacre was a systematic and state-sponsored torture under the Nazi regime and the murder of six million Jews. This is also the biggest mistake the Nazis committed during the war.

Killing innocent Jews, including women and children, portrays Adolf Hitler as a brutal dictator with animal instincts. This is crucial to the success of mobilizing large-scale military efforts for Germany.

In addition, Hitler wasted a lot of human and material resources in implementing racist torture and murdering innocent and non-combat Jews. If Hitler avoids such atrocities, it will be more difficult for the Allied countries to mobilize large-scale military reactions that will eventually lead to the collapse of the Third Reich.

7

Germany and Japan coordinated the Soviet invasion

When Germany coordinated with Japan and forced the Soviet Union to fight on two fronts, it made a serious mistake by invading the Soviet Union. One reason why the Soviet Union ’s winter counterattack successfully left Moscow only a few kilometers was because the Soviets were able to use Siberia ’s well-equipped and well-trained troops to strengthen the army.

These recruits stopped and repulsed the German soldiers who were hit by the winter. If Hitler coordinated with Japan during the Soviet campaign, this would be the most likely scenario: as German soldiers advanced from the West, Japan would invade the Soviet Union from the East.

Japan could have rescued Soviet military reinforcements from the edge of defeat by their German invaders. In addition, the huge size of the Soviet Union allowed it to trade space in time. If Germany and Japan invaded the Soviet Union at the same time, the Soviet Union would not have such luxury.

6

Hitler did not interfere with the combat strategy

Hitler ’s interference in the combat strategy caused more harm than the joint efforts of the Allies. He bypassed the generals on the Eastern Front and served as the army's daily combat command.

To make matters worse, Hitler did not consider any point of view different from his own. He issued an order based on his view of reality. From his headquarters in Germany, Hitler used information that was too old when he arrived to guide the actions of various departments of the Eastern Front. [5]

For example, Hitler ’s instructions that the German army should stand firm in Moscow opposed the advice of his officers on the ground. It caused the death of a million German soldiers.

In addition, some historians believe that it is not only the firepower of the Allied forces that made the Allied invasion of Normandy successful. Hitler refused to listen to wise military advisers and played an important role in France ’s defeat of the German army.

5

Hitler did not order the bombing of British cities

The German bombing of the United Kingdom was initially limited to military and industrial targets, aimed at weakening British self-defense capabilities. In fact, Germany has made significant progress in bombing military installations, especially British Air Force bases and airports.

When the Royal Air Force (the Royal Air Force) carried out a retaliatory airstrike on Berlin, Hitler lost his temper, ignoring the significant progress made by the German Air Force against the British Air Force. In September 1940, several British airports and air bases were destroyed.

When Hitler gave a breather and ordered German aircraft to bomb British cities, especially London, the Royal Air Force was jumping on one leg. This gave the Royal Air Force enough time to repair its airports and bases, and return to the battlefield in a fully loaded manner.

4

Hitler did not stop the pursuit of the British army in Dunkirk

In May 1940, German infantry units and several tank units searched for 350,000 British soldiers in Dunkirk. Armored tank troops are on the verge of surrounding the British army, and the German Air Force (German Air Force) carried out an unimpeded bombardment of the enemy.

Suddenly, Hitler gave a "stop" command. Hitler did not let the fast-driving tanks and tanks surpass the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), but hoped that the slow-moving infantry unit could accomplish this task.

The British military headquarters used Hitler ’s mistakes to mobilize ships, yachts, fishing boats, rowboats and lifeboats to evacuate BEF. In the end, only 40,000 British soldiers were occupied by Germans.

If Hitler allowed the armored forces to continue their pursuit, the Germans could have captured more British troops. Like France, Britain may have surrendered early in the war.

3

Germany did not invade Greece

Hitler believed that if he invaded the Soviet Union in May 1941, he would surpass Moscow by winter. Some historians believe that if Germany did not invade Greece, Hitler's reasoning may be accurately explained.

Following Italy's fiasco in Greece, Hitler decided to save the Italians. Historians believe that entering Greece delayed the Soviet invasion by six weeks. [8] If Hitler did not enter Greece in April 1941, the Soviet attack might have occurred earlier, and Moscow would collapse before winter.

2

Germany did not fight on two fronts

The fact that Germany fought on two fronts played a crucial role in their defeat. The Nazis were fighting against Britain and the United States against the West, while they fought against the East in the Soviet Union. This is a fatal decision for Germany.

If the Nazis fought one line at a time, the course of the war may be different. On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union's invasion transformed a frontline war in the exhausted British war into two fronts. The Eastern Front absorbed about three-quarters of German troops, causing two-thirds of German casualties. [9]

Many historians wonder why Hitler committed the fatal mistake of invading the Soviet Union before Britain surrendered. If Hitler invaded Britain and waited patiently for war before moving to the east, he would put war on the front line.

With the failure of the United Kingdom, it is almost impossible for the United States to have a business base in Europe. Even if this has become possible, it will allow Germany enough time to figure out how to subdue the United States.

Hitler transferred military resources to the Soviet Union, allowing Britain sufficient time to rebuild military power and allowing the United States to obtain a stronghold on the Western Front. If Hitler is more cautious and limits the war to one front at a time, then there is no doubt that World War II will benefit Germany.

In addition, historians believe that if Hitler had not violated the non-aggression treaty, the Soviets, who used Stalin as the dictator, could become the power of the Axis powers. Hitler could have opposed the Soviet Union at the most convenient time.

1

Germany is more patient before starting the war

One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Nazi wars was that before they were fully prepared for this, they started a global military operation. One disadvantage of this decision is that the German navy is not ready to fight the Second World War.

Although the United States has aircraft carriers and several surface ships, the German naval war mainly relied on U-boats. After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles banned the accumulation of huge military power from Germany. The German Navy and Air Force were not built until 1935. [10]

Surprisingly, by 1939, Germany had begun a war on a global scale. But Hitler had only four years to prepare it. If he waits another ten years, Germany will have more time to develop a military force that could have been won on such a large scale.

How can the crew of a submarine know the exact place they are in the World when the submarine is submerged? How can they navigate accurately knowing the position they are? Similarly, how can subs avoid collision with seamounts and rocky outcrops?

I was in the Navy in the 1980s, when the first half-dozen GPS satellites were in orbit. But even in the pre-GPS days we still had a pretty good idea of our position, using the Ship’s Inertial Navigation System (SINS). SINS actually dates back to the 1950s or so - it uses three very precise gyroscopes with their spin axes oriented in the X, Y, and Z directions to determine the submarine’s acceleration and movement. It’s not as good as GPS, but it gave us a pretty good idea as to where we were at any given time.

The first GPS satellites started going up in the 1980s - there were 6 up when I was on my submarine and as long as three were “visible” we could get a fix from them. In practice that meant that we had to plan our times at periscope depth (PD) so we could get a fix - submarines now can do it as easily as you can get a GPS location on your phone. As to how it’s done - you just take the boat to PD, stick a mast with a GPS antenna out of the water a few feet, and get your fix. Easy-peasy!

My boat had a number of masts - two periscope, a radio mast, radar, the snorkel mast, and one or two others that were more specialized. We also had radio antennas on one of our periscopes so we could copy some radio traffic when we were making a periscope observation with it. Anyhow - getting one’s GPS location is fairly straightforward, but even if the boat can’t go to PD to put up a mast they still have SINS.

The other part of your question - how do we know where the shallow water and seamounts are - is pretty straightforward as well. Thanks to a handful of satellites we’ve had a fairly good map of the seafloor for over a decade now. All the satellites do is to map the level of the ocean’s surface very, very precisely - but that is a reflection of the subsurface topography. If you have a seamount, for example, it’s pretty massive and it increases the local gravitational pull ever so slightly. This, in turn, pulls a little more water over top of the seamount. So by mapping the ocean’s surface with enough precision we can have a very good idea as to where the seamounts and shallow waters are. In addition to that, the world’s navies have been mapping the seafloor using sonar and even by sounding (lowering lines to the bottom and measuring the amount of line paid out) for centuries. (Seafloor mapping - Wikipedia)

The final part of the puzzle is to make sure that the submarine’s position - including any accumulated possible SINS errors - never comes close to an underwater hazard. If, for example, you’ve been running deep for, say, 24 hours then you’ll have a SINS position. We’ve been using SINS long enough to know how much the position might be off by for every hour it’s running, so you take that possible error, factor in the ship’s speed and the length of time since the last satellite fix, and that gives you the maximum possible error in your position. Use that distance to make a box around your submarine, and make sure not to let any seamounts come inside the box - you ought to be OK. U.S. Bathymetric and Fishing Maps

Every now and again a submarine will still be surprised (15 Years Ago, a U.S. Navy Submarine Ran Into a Mountain) - but it happens less and less frequently now than in the past.

(Source: Maps Expose Unseen Details of the Atlantic Ocean Floor)

Why did Europeans essentially conquer the world? What factors led to them being the first ones to develop the technology and military might to be able to do so?

Geography, or more specifically farming, germs, colonies and coal.

Perhaps the most famous answer to this question is the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Diamond was inspired to answer this question after meeting Yali, a local politician in New Guinea, who wanted to know: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond's answer was that this was mostly an accident of geography. The basic building blocks of civilisation are plants and animals that can be domesticated. As the largest of the continents, Eurasia has far more usable flora and fauna than any other continent.

What's more, the East-West axis of Eurasia allowed these edible plants and tame animals to be propagated across all the major civilisations of the continent, west to Britain and east to China. European crops grow very well in southern Africa, but the harsh climate of sub-Saharan Africa lies in the way, meaning that cows and grain couldn't reach the bottom of the continent until Europeans learnt to sail the oceans. The Americas, meanwhile, were host to a decent number of useful species, from maize to potatoes, but they were each stuck in their particular climatic niche and couldn’t spread north or south.

Better farming led to higher population densities, but there were consequences to large numbers of people and animals living together, consequences that we are still living with today: disease. However, whilst the viruses and other pathogens from domesticated animals killed millions, the survivors passed their immunity on to their children. This meant that when the people from the Old World went to the New, Americans died in vast quantities of European diseases, but Europeans did not die of American bugs.

That is, in essence, the argument in Diamond’s book. But whilst it’s as good as far as it goes, there is a huge elephant in the room: China. China enjoyed all the benefits of the Eurasia farming inheritance. As the source of many of the world’s infectious diseases her population’s immunity was as good as anyone’s. So why was it Europe, and not China, that conquered the world? Diamond suggests the answer was political, that as China became a Universal State with no enemies of equal stature, she did not have the drive to improve that the warring European nations had. This is probably not right.

Instead, the next piece of the jigsaw is provided by Kenneth Pomeranz in his book The Great Divergence. Comparing Europe and China pre-1800 he looks at all the reasons that are given for subsequent European domination, such as political and financial institutions, culture and economics, and so on, and finds almost all of them all wanting.

The one factor in which Europe did enjoy and advantage though was it’s American colonies. China had the vast Pacific to its east, whilst Europe had the more manageable Atlantic. The ship technology developed to navigate the stormy seas of western Europe could cross the Atlantic to reach the New World, but the Pacific was impassable to Chinese vessels. Superior military technology, and techniques, allowed Europeans to take what they wanted by force. Guns, germs and steal really.

However, even with the spoils of an entire continent to be ruthlessly exploited, as well as the first factories, Europe, as a whole, was not richer than China in 1800. Parts of Europe, like England, were far wealthier than the Chinese average, it is true, but equally parts of China, like the Yangtze Delta, were richer than the European average. The West only starts to accelerate away from the East in the nineteenth century when it begins to use significant amounts of coal. Now this is a complicated issue, because China has vast amounts of coal too. So why was the Industrial Revolution powered by anthracite from Wales, not Inner Mongolia? Pomeranz puts this too down to geography as well.

Chinese coal is mainly in the north, and the chief problem with extracting it is stopping it catching fire. With European coal mines the major issue was draining the water out. To solve this the Europeans, led by the British, used steam engines. In 1800 steam engines were grossly inefficient. However, when used in coal mines this didn’t really matter. Being based at the mine itself, not only were there no transport costs for the fuel, but they were able to run on the lowest quality coal that didn’t really have a commercial value anyway. Thanks to this free energy the European economy received an injection of free calories that were not dependent on the limited resource of land.

More significantly though, as steam engines were used more, they improved and became more efficient. Engineers like Watt became justifiably famous, but really this wasn’t the work a few geniuses, but a gradual improvement based on experience. With usable steam engines came railways, steam ships and all the paraphernalia of the industrial revolution. European heavy metal blew the Asian economy out of the water, in some cases literally.

So, there we have it. Not proven, by any means, but it is at least a theory that is consistent with the facts. Europe, for a while, was the dominant force in the world due to accidents of geography. Eurasian farming was the best. Eurasian diseases were the worst. Europe was gifted the Americas as colonies, and her coal reserves posed exactly the right sort of problems for the development of steam engines.

Guns, germs, steel, colonies and coal.

Sources

Guns, Germs, and Steel was first published by W. W. Norton in March 1997 by Jared Diamond

The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000) by Kenneth Pomeranz

Why are air, water, and glass transparent?

Many non-conductive materials can be transparent. Conductive materials like metals absorb light because their free electrons interact with photons. Non-conductive materials don’t absorb photons in the same way. So, most transparent materials tend to be non-conductive.

That includes numerous polymers like Plexiglas:

And countless crystals can be transparent. Even table salt is transparent if you grow it in large crystals. I work with some really weird crystals for infrared optics, stuff I’d never consider to be transparent but are. (Sodium chloride is, in fact, one of the options for optics. It just doesn’t handle humidity too well.)

(Table salt)

Solid carbon can be transparent, too.

A key factor is preparation. Table salt generally doesn’t look transparent because it is a pile of shattered crystals filled with voids, defects, and contaminants.

Likewise, this pile of glass used to be transparent. Now light has to pass through a maze of surfaces.

Grow table salt as a large crystal and then polish it and it’ll be transparent:

Aluminum oxynitride is generally made by sintering many small particles of the ceramic, resulting in opaque and translucent materials like this:

But with a sintering aide to close the pores in the ceramic, you can get panels like this and launch a thousand bad news articles about “transparent aluminum.” (AlON is not “transparent aluminum.”)

Likewise, a pile of alumina (aluminum oxide) dust is not transparent:

And when you sinter it into useful parts, alumina’s often opaque:

But when you grow the alumina as large crystals and polish it, you can get some very hard, transparent crystals like the panels on the nose of this Sniper targeting pod. (Apple also tried and failed to make alumina screens for its iPhones.)

And when nature grows a large alumina crystal, it often botches the job and lets it get contaminated with metals. For some reason, people pay a lot for these dirty, transparent crystals (called sapphire):

And ruby…

Then there are liquids that are transparent, like (almost) pure alcohol:

Liquid nitrogen:

And even hydrocarbons like gasoline (quite a stew of hydrocarbons) are transparent:

The first step to finding a transparent material is usually to identify a non-conductive material. Often no one bothers making them transparent, but they can. Even something like wood

https://youtu.be/d8cRJjfznEM

Is everything made on Earth made up of things from Earth?

 There’s actually a really good historical example of this. Before humans knew how to extract iron from iron ore (which occurred around 1,200 BCE) a few groups of people were already using iron tools. Look at this example of iron fastened to the end of a harpoon 

How did they do this? King Tut was buried with an iron dagger even though no one knew how to smelt iron back when he was alive 

So where did this iron come from? There’s no natural iron just sitting around on the ground waiting for people to use it. smelting iron from iron ore is immensely difficult. However, there’s a huge amount of iron in space!

These iron-rich meteorites would be found by ancient people and processed into useful tools. Nobody could heat a furnace to the required temperature to cast and forge iron, so these meteorites were “cold worked” (i.e. simply hammered into the required shape at room temperature). So there you go! Not everything made by humans is from stuff in the Earth’s crust.