Historian Reacts - GERMANY COULD NOT WIN WW2 (part 1) by Potential History

welcome back everybody to another reaction video and it's a special day here on the channel because today is 50k day by the end of this day we will hit 50 000 subscribers assuming that everything goes as it has so far on the channel so this is your last chance if you're watching this to enter our contest our giveaway when we hit 50 000 subscribers we are going to be giving away uh three biographies uh to one each to three different people and you can choose that either through amazon to have it mailed to your home or as an audio book through audio audible uh we will let this go if we hit 50 000 today which i assume we will we'll let it go all the way to midnight eastern time so you'll still have a chance throughout the day today to enter i'll put the link in the description for you to enter that giveaway we'll do another one uh for another milestone at some point i don't know where we'll do that at but at some milestone maybe like 75 000 we'll do another giveaway i'm going to be doing that constantly giveaways on this channel absolutely something i want to continue to do today we're going to dive into another video that's been often suggested to me which is germany could not win world war ii by potential history now if you follow this channel for very long you know that i am in the minority of historians who are of the opinion that the germans did not need to invade the soviet union in order to get precious resources i know that goes against the conventional wisdom that germany had to have soviet oil in order to be able to continue their war effort and i'll talk about some of the reasons why i don't believe that's the case and it's all based on hindsight obviously i'm not basing it on what germany believed or what the case was at the time but simply on how things turned out so with that in mind i'm interested to see what they talk about here so let's go ahead and dive into this video there i finished fine-tuning my what if machine it can answer any what-if question accurate to within one-tenth of a plausibility unit who wants the machine to show them an alternate reality oh i want to know if germany wins if hitler stops making decisions [Music] who else has a question for the what if machine i have one do they win if they mars produce the mouse tank [Music] make that machine show me what would happen if they took moscow that's so plausible i can't believe it people love rooting for the underdog these stories strike a chord with us at a very basic level and you can tell this by how popular these stories are in media this also translates to real world stories although real life does not have a plot that always turns in the underdogs favor so there's this kind of romanticism connected to fighting for a lost cause that a lot of people assign to a lot of real world groups one of these you see talked about a lot is the german army of world war ii that if only dumb hitler hadn't been in charge or if different choices were made that the war would have turned out different now i will say this um yeah while there is that element of romanticism of rooting for the underdog in a lost cause i don't know anybody who wishes germany won world war ii um there's speculation about how germany could have won world war ii but i've never in all my time talking about history met somebody who wasn't glad germany did lose so it's not entirely the same as other situations where you wish the cinderella the underdog had won where you root for germany the way you rooted for rocky things like that but i understand what he's saying and a lot of these arguments seem to hold water on the surface but upon reflection mostly missed the point or do not make a significant enough change to sway anything these are my favorite how germany could have won scenarios and how they're wrong i hear this one all the time that if the germans had just driven onto moscow and taken it the russians would have capitulated it is rarely backed up with evidence as to why even in the memoirs of german generals after the war they constantly mentioned that the drive to moscow would have meant victory in the east and i think the reason for this is that they model the russian campaign after the french campaign in the french campaign in 1940 the french surrender once paris is cut off from its forces and looks like it's about to fall using this model a lot of people think that the exact same would apply to russia the only problem with this is russia is a whole different animal both politically and geographically stalin was going to put every man woman and child in the soviet union between him and the advancing germans and this is exemplified by the way the red army fought the war often trading casualties for time so i will say this about what he's saying and i get what he's saying and i do believe that moscow falling would not have ended the war um you know moscow had been taken before now granted it wasn't the capital when it was taken before by napoleon napoleon took moscow and it was basically empty when he took it they had basically gave it to him um but he still lost so i get what he's saying and i agree to a point that taking moscow wouldn't have been to the war but i do also believe that taking moscow taking stalingrad taking key uh russian cities and being able to encircle some of those armies and destroy them the psychological effect of that might have caused some upheaval in the soviet union i wonder even if it was possible to maybe even see another civil war see some overthrow of stalin by his generals for example um if they felt like his leadership was not leading them to victory so i could see a lot of things changing in the soviet union of moscow and some other key cities like leningrad or stalingrad fall but i do agree that it wouldn't necessarily have automatically spelled the end of the war so if moscow was taken sure it's a political and also logistical defeat given that the rail network was centered around it but no way do i think stalin is just going to shrug and say well we tried after moscow was taken and with that we would probably see the soviet union fighting to the bitter end just like the germans did in reality this is also backed up by real world history from napoleon's russia campaign in 1812 where he went on to take moscow but still lost the war russia is such a large and vast country that they have the ability to trade casualties and land at a higher rate than any other country can but even though russia is an incredibly large country once you get far enough east there's not a lot there so it's not like they would have had to go all the way to the pacific ocean taking russian territory um and i agree with him stalin would have fought to the bitter end but my question is would stalin have still been the one making those decisions if it got to that point so um yeah i would agree with him overall on his point about this but this does cause a lot of what if questions for me and therefore the normal rules of war such as taking the capital and ensuring victory do not apply are they not seeing this another commonly heard point is that hitler made terrible decisions and he should have just listened to his generals now i'm not here to defend adolf hitler he's a crazy genocidal maniac let's not make two ways about it but this isn't always the case for example hitler and the high command were all in agreement on invading russia they all very much wanted to in their eyes destroy communism and save germany as hitler laid out in his book i agree with that and maybe somebody can correct me on this because my memories fade failing me on this one while the the russians were a target and while the generals did generally agree on an invasion of russia of the soviet union i don't know that they all agreed on the timing of it happening when it did i don't think they wanted to do it when hitler decided to do it i could be wrong about that somebody correct me but once this effort was undertaken hitler and his generals began to disagree at times on what moves needed to be made and once the war is over many generals and their memoirs begin to claim that hitler made all the bad decisions and that if he had just listened to them the war would have been won and one example of this i already hinted at in the former point hitler's generals were convinced that taking moscow would end the war for many erroneous reasons i listed previously for hitler moscow was a general direction in which to head but was not the final objective for him the resources in the ukraine and the oil fields beyond were a much more important target and given germany's oil shortages this is a good example of where hitler was right so i want to stop for a second and this is just a general thing and everybody does this why do people call it the ukraine i don't think that that's really how it's supposed to be referred to it's just ukraine right i mean why do we say the ukraine i i've never understood where that came from but i don't think it's accurate just a general kind of question maybe somebody who's watching from ukraine can answer that one for me i don't know why we do that important target and given germany's oil shortages this is a good example of where hitler was right and his generals were wrong and actually a lot of hitler's so-called mistakes start to make a whole lot more sense once you put it into the context of germany's fuel shortages and if you want more information on this tick did an excellent video on germany's oil problem that you should really check out so and i've talked about this before the oil thing because i know that's the most common that in ideology which i think is a much more accurate reason why they attacked the soviets there was just as i've said before hitler hated soviets uh bolsheviks as he called him every bit as much as he hated jews sometimes more but here's what it comes down to for me he never took those oil fields that he was after in the caucuses there were romanian oil fields as well that were much easier to take he never took those oil fields that everybody always talks about when it comes to the invasion of the soviet union and think of the millions of gallons of oil that were expended in invading the soviet union and how those could have been used to fight the western allies so that's my main argument is that it makes sense if he actually takes them but since he didn't actually take them it actually cost him oil it didn't you know it was a drain on his resources not a saving of resources or a gaining of resources he could have used all the oil that he spent trying to get that oil and he was already trading with the soviet union there was actually a trade uh policy in place the only thing was hitler didn't want to have to pay for it when he could just take it so that's what it really came down to i'm not saying he didn't want and that wasn't an objective and a reason for it i'm just saying that in hindsight it didn't make sense another example of this sentiment being wrong is operation citadel in 1943. hitler's generals convinced him that an attack on the cursed bulge would [ __ ] the red army and renew germany's initiative in the war hitler saw this plan as very flawed though famously saying every time i think about operation citadel my stomach turns over and seeing how poorly this turned out for the germans his premonition was eerily correct now if this was the caricature of hitler always overriding his generals that is commonly seen citadel would have been called off before it was launched now these are just two quick examples and yes there are times especially later in the war where hitler overrules his generals with poor decisions the battle the bulge comes to mind but early in the war when these decisions really count hitler is many times making the right decisions when overruling his generals or going along with them in agreement of a common goal so yeah but the the big one that sticks out in my mind is not allowing them to retreat from stalingrad when it was clearly lost and the generals that were there knew that forcing them to fight on and completely losing that army uh that one sticks out in my mind quite a bit where hitler completely bungled the whole thing though hitler should have just listened to his generals and he would have won the war as a moot point i wouldn't go that far many times he did and his generals were wrong and many times he didn't and he turned out to be right it's all adolf hitler adolf hitler alice hitler so yeah i would agree with him on that one i don't think that hitler overruling his generals changes the outcome of the war but i do think that he severely hurt their cause many times with some of the decisions he made this is actually a point i used to subscribe to a very honest critique of the german war economy is that it was not on the right footing and people make this argument usually saying things like germany should have just made more panzer fours instead of pouring resources into the tiger or germany should have built the luftwaffe back up so they could regain air superiority and i will give you that the german war economy in many places was an absolute nightmare john parshall does an excellent lecture on tank production in world war ii and really highlights how backwards the german production process was for armored vehicle manufacturing and mentions how that knowledge can be applied to other types of war manufacturing and although once spear takes over production is streamlined to a degree and munitions and weapons production goes up year by year it's not near where it needs to be to fight this attritional war so obviously the solution is to just streamline production sort of how you see in the american model and this would have given germany a better chance in the war although this is a good criticism it misses the core issue the biggest thing germany was running low on from 1942 onward is as i mentioned before oil and larger numbers of tanks and planes wouldn't be any good if there was no fuel to run them i believe statistically germany's oil production and their the level of oil they had actually peaked in 43 it was actually from 43 on that it goes down but you have to remember too that part of the oil problem was that they lost the air supremacy and their synthetic factories were getting bombed and that was when they really started to see a a reduction in the amount of oil they had so you could make the argument that had they built up the luftwaffe back up had they not just drained themselves in the battle of britain for example and held on to air supremacy and kept from being bombed uh to the point that they were that they would have never lost the oil uh production that they had and maybe could have kept on going i'm just speculating and i'm just trying to offer some counter argument i'm not disagreeing with him i'm just kind of offering another perspective on it to see kind of where maybe it could be looked at differently also germany was having manpower shortages as early as 1942 or 43 and along with fuel to run these machines you need people to crew them these are just two issues that cannot be remedied by streamlining production at a certain point germany is just going to be out of oil and out of men and no amount of additional tanks or planes would operationally be possible what's the matter run out of gas kinda embarrassing [Music] this is another point that deceptively seems to make a lot of sense as germany was crushed by a two-front war it stands to reason that if japan and germany through their alliance had coordinated an attack on russia they would have won and that may honestly be true a big boost to the defense of moscow came after russian troops from siberia were sent west after the russo-japanese non-aggression pact you know the best thing that japan and germany could have done to been on the same page to help them win the war japan not attacking the united states would have helped and instead attacking the soviet union opening up a second front for the soviets so obviously at some point i think america probably comes into the war anyway uh but it would have been much later uh so that would have helped a lot the only problem with this is that coordination did not and was never going to happen germany and japan were allies by circumstance and shared no real common goals with each other true and in fact they're operating in opposition to each other at times german training of chinese troops in the 30s as they were fighting the japanese is a direct example of this in short neither side was going to stick out its neck for the other in fact russia as a common enemy was probably the only instance in which they would have and even then they did not the reason for japan not wanting to do this is mostly colored by the japanese experience against the soviets at the battle of kankangal please forgive my pronunciation where the red army gave the imperial army a very bloody nose in an undeclared border conflict this incident convinced the japanese to not go through with any action that would provoke the soviet union as they did not want war with them since they were already fighting china and would soon be fighting the united states and they did end up at war with the soviet union and that was actually that's not very well talked about uh as being one of the reasons that japan ended up surrendering we we tend to focus all on the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki but we also forget that right around that time the soviet union declared war on japan back at their conference a few months earlier truman stalin and churchill had met and talked about that and there was an agreement in place that three months or 90 days after germany surrendered the soviet union would it would uh declare war on japan and they did three months to the day after the end of the war in may of 1945 they did declare war on japan so that was a big reason why japan ended up willing to surrender besides the bombs this avoidance of provoking the soviet union went far enough that during the war in the pacific between japan and the united states the japanese refused to sink any u.s merchant ships headed to the soviet union so the japanese attacking the soviet union directly flies in the face of the intentions and characteristics of the japanese high command to the point where it strays out of potential history kill yourself into the realm of fantasy you have screwed me again japan this is my favorite one if they had just made insert ridiculous design here the war may have gone differently and it's the idea that this thing or this thing or this thing would somehow have single-handedly lengthened the war there are a few fan favorites for picks of these the one i see most often being the mouse the ridiculous 200 ton behemoth that in reality would have been awesome target practice for allied fighter bombers and something for allied soldiers to gawk at once it had run out of fuel and had to be abandoned or german jet aircraft that although cutting edge and superior to what the allies had still couldn't have been applied in a large scale due to the aforementioned fuel and personnel problems and when you think about the huge number of allied fighters at this point even though on a one-on-one basis maybe they can't compete with like a measure schmidt 262 for for example they could still take them down you know for example the uh the tuskegee airmen the red tails took on some of those with regular fighters and they were able to take them take them out so uh with the huge uh superiority that the allies had in fighters in um 1944-45 even if the germans had more uh jets it wouldn't have made a difference in the end i 100 agree with him that germany was never going to be able to mass produce any of these these incredibly cutting edge wonder weapons to make a difference and the list for these things goes on and on a personal pet peeve of mine in this category is the what-if question about the german atomic program and the claim that if they had applied themselves the germans could have come up with an atomic weapon first nope this notion though just like that of japan invading russia very quickly falls into the category of fantasy once looked at for three main reasons one many of germany's top scientists were expelled in the 30s for being jewish automatically limiting german atomic capabilities and actually many of these scientists went on to work in the american nuclear program so to make this win scenario work you automatically have to make the nazis tolerant of jews which is not going to happen yep two the german atomic program is all but cancelled by 1942. as speer put it we got the view that the development was very much at the beginning the physicists themselves didn't want to put much into it and if you look at the amount of resources that the united states put into the manhattan project the manpower the electricity the the money that it cost the uh just sheer logistics of all of it germany was just not in a position to pull that off uh by late in the war especially with allied bombing as it was we would have probably destroyed any facilities that were working on those things germany was never going to get the bomb because of all the reasons he just mentioned and more which works into my third point that hitler saw atomic sciences jewish science and pointed the focus of german development towards conventional weapons so we're not even talking about an atomic race between the us and germany as it was barely being pursued by the germans and to give a what-if scenario about it would fly directly in the face of what hitler stood for and this gets into the bigger problem with this question that even if germany does produce these wonder weapons and extends the war it's only going to extend it long enough to be the first country to get nuked due to the germany first policy of the allies are you making this jet plane um [Music] now these are just a handful of points that people bring up when talking about how germany could have won but there are many more that i didn't go into that are equally baseless such as the germans should have and could have invaded england even though the kriegsmarine would not be able to support a large amphibious attack and the much larger royal navy would have probably sunk the invading force before it even reached the shores or the barbarossa should have taken place earlier even though it wasn't really the winter or the rainy season that stopped the germans it was a lack of supplies that needed to be brought up for more info on that check out this lecture by david stahill you'll see people bringing up scenario after scenario that ben's reality and character motivations vary widely to craft a scenario that germany could win but here's my point germany would not have won world war ii no matter what way you slice it the fact of the matter is this is a country that is too small and too short on resources to take on the three largest world powers at once especially given the erroneous actions and motivations they have basically the germans dealt themselves a bad hand and played it poorly and the only way that's going to change is if you bend time and space to their liking with the benefit of 2020 hindsight all things that are not going to happen in reality all right so i agree with all of the reasons that he gave in in general that based on the reasons that he gave the arguments that that he talks about people making that none of those things would have changed the outcome i do not however believe that there is no scenario in which germany can win world war ii i believe there probably are some i just don't think there are any of the things that that were talked about here um not invading the soviet union at all which obviously requires hitler and his nazi uh government to change their ideology when it comes to uh to the soviets which wasn't gonna happen but i could see that as a situation that allows them the time and the space and the focus they need to bring about a settlement in the war that maybe changes things japan not attacking pearl harbor might help change that outcome but again that requires japan to completely change their thinking and the way they saw things so um i i don't think there's any reasonable way that germany wins the war but i do think there are option options out there but they weren't things that were within the realm of possibility so i'm gonna say i agree with everything he said here so let me know your thoughts about all that use the comment section below hit that like button make sure you enter the uh the giveaway before we hit 50 000 sometime today i'll be announcing those winners tomorrow i'll draw those winners reach out to them once i've heard from all of them we'll make an announcement and make sure you subscribe and hit the notification bell i do have some more original content coming later this week so hopefully you'll check that out thanks for watching

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 532,594

Keywords: history reaction, potential history, potential history reaction, germany could not win ww2 reaction, germany could not win ww2, world war 2, oversimplified reaction, historian reacts, world war ii, ww2 reaction, germany couldnt win ww2 reaction, second world war, history tutor reacts, history tutor reaction, alternate history, history teacher reacts, history teacher reacts to sabaton, alternate history of europe

Id: 5XKd9tfYSv0

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021