MovingTarget said: With the war in the east over the US will be facing thousands of extra tanks and tank destroyers as well as an extra 2 million troops. The germans likely keep superiority in numbers for most of the war in Europe even if they can't repulse the d-day landings Click to expand... Click to shrink...

IDonT4 said: Too deterministic huh?



How about this. If, and a big if, Germany "holds the line", German population centers gets nuke in 1945. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

IDonT4 said:

Except for a few paratroop units, West Allied divisions were completely mechanized with organic tank and tank destroyer battalions.

Overwhelming air superiority

Overwhelming artillery support with proximity shells

Overwhelming material superiority from bullets to beans Number of divisions won't tell us anything. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

IDonT4 said: The Germany military's preoccupation of "Elite" units like the SS and Panzer Lehr means that to create these units, the rest of the frontline units were weakened. So you basically end up with a hollow army that is dependent on the elite units. So instead of having theses elite units enhance the combat power of the army as a whole, it becomes dependent on it to achieve anything. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Kalga said: People are stressing on economics/industry is because it was (and possibly is) just that important. It doesn't matter how brilliant your generals are or how great the individual soldiers are. They can defeat every army they come in contact with but as long as they can't stop the other armies... then they lose anyways. This is relevant as the greater American population (not just in absolute numbers, but also in the greater utilization of said population) means that the USA will end up with more armies than Germany (even accounting for distance). Click to expand... Click to shrink...

CV12Hornet said: At this point in time, the Americans have finished up the Marianas campaign, and are a month away from landing at Leyte. At this point, the US can afford to put further ground offensive operations against Japan on hold, and while the invasion of the Philippines still has a good shot at going ahead due to the same political considerations that allowed the invasions in the first place, this still frees up quite a few divisions.



Longer-term, though, the US needs to raise more divisions to defeat Germany on their own, and this is a problem. The US had enormous competing demands for manpower from its other branches and from industry, and cannot risk raising much more manpower without causing economic dislocations.



Of course, that's if they do it via ground offensive. The US knows their manpower shortages, know the Germans will transfer vast number s of troops from the East. Their best bet is to transfer as much strength to France, go on the defensive, and wait for an opportunity, either to counterattack or to get nukes. Helping that is the fact that French neutrality is going to be in name only. They're still being invaded and occupied by the Germans, after all. That means supplies, transportation, and probably a lot of Frenchmen in rear-echelon duties.



This is winnable by the US. I just don't think it's via a grand march of Shermans to Berlin. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Most likely. As the table of figures showed, even if both the americans and germans were able to magically transport all their troops to western europe, the germans would not lose their superiority in numbers. In fact, they could actually make a slight gain (188% compared to 162%).Yes, it is. War is not deterministic, nor is it useful to consider it so. Military theorys that rely on deterministic approaches are not only useless, butto their users.FYI, this scenario is set late in september of 1944. The little boy and fat man bombs weren't ready until july of 1945. Thats almost 10 months away.The number of divisions (and the force ratios in general)an important aspect that you ignore at your own risk.Your analysis is accurate but incomplete (it should have mentioned ULTRA, BTW), since it misses out on the factors working in germanys favor.-The germans have better anti-tank weapons, particularly with regards to the handheld panzerfaust. Even though they have a shortage of tanks and anti-tank guns, the germans are still very competent at using the two together as a sword and shield to defeat armored thrusts.-The germans have increasing numbers of tanks like the panther, tiger I, and tiger II becoming available. Despite problems with reliability, these are excellent tanks which are superior to the sherman in a tank fuel. This also holds true for the tank destroyers that are still being churned out of factorys.-Even at this stage in the war when personnel policys had been turned upside down, the germans still have greater fighting power than the americans. They have better trained soldiers and officers *, with better command staffs, more initiative, and more cohesion. This gives them an advantage in many dimensions.-The germans have jet aircraft like the Me 262 and Ar 234. Their interceptors will soon get shipments of R4M rockets , which can take down a B-17 with one or two hits from beyond the range of their defensive guns.-Their arsenal of flak guns will soon adopt the doppelzunder fuse, which increases their lethality against bomber formations by a factor of two to five (depending on the caliber of the flak gun). This will make daylight bombing raids alot more dangerous.*This is also true of senior officers, including those who led regiments and divisions. The 90th infantry division which got bloodied in normandy is perhaps the best example of this.Thats just an opinion, and its probably a wrong one, too. There is no inherent reason for an army to be filled with divisions of equal quality, particularly that isn't the best way to employ your manpower. Some of them are going to be tasked with low risk, simple missions which don't even merit the attention of an bog standard division: Thats why the germans could get away with using static divisions composed of ethnic germans (or even minoritys). They didn't need APCs, tanks, and SP guns to guard the atlantic wall, or to deal with partisans and worker uprisings.The problem is that increasing the size of the army isn't something you can do overnight, or without consequences (as CV12Hornet pointed out). Many of the american divisions that got sent into france had trained for a solid year, and still came up short against the germans they fought against. As one commentor summarised: ''The average American infantry division were probably never as good at pure infantry tactics as a good German division. But the Americans almost always had more armor, more artillery, and more airpower than their opponents so it is understandable if they substituted firepower for blood.'' So you are probably going to need an entire year before new divisions can be raised, trained, and actually sent into battle with reasonable odds of success.You are right on the money with this analysis, though the conclusion of the war is yet to be determined.The naval implications in this scenario are pretty mixed. Not having the royal navy around is going to make things a real pain in the ass, and this holds true for the canadian navy as well. Green water operations around europe are going to be hampered, and transatlantic convoys will be heavily exposed. Fortunately, the americans will be able to transfer all their carrier strike groups into theater within a matter of weeks. That will give them options they didn't originally have, including offensives against norway, denmark etc. The surface portion of the kriegsmarine will be in grave danger.