Crossover Sidetalk: Could Nazis Really Have Won?

Also, Hitler decided to concentrate on taking Stalingrad rather than Leningrad. (He liked the idea of taking the city that bore Stalin's name....)
If Hitler didn't invade Russia, the Allied invasion of mainland Europe would have had to be postponed, but I think they would have eventually done it. Maybe they would have waited until the American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. The US thought they were in a neck-and-neck race with the Germans to develop the first nuclear weapons. But in fact, the Germans never even came up with a workable design for a nuclear reactor, let alone an atomic bomb!
But at any rate, once the American air force had nuclear weapons, it would have been game over for Germany....

I had to delete my original answer because I cannot find the history book that delved into Hitler's fixation to the sudden halt at the brink of victory "strategy", specifically Leningrad (St. Petersburg) so no way for me to back it up. I read that book as a teen and it was my favorite book now I'm sad it's buried somewhere I could not find it. The book also discussed Dunkirk, which Hitler also halted the pursuit of the British.

So a few things that could have changed history as we know it:

1. The Tripartite Pact - the pact that could have deterred the US in supporting Britain ironically led to the American active involvement to the war in Europe after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Also Mussolini had his own little wars that Hitler had to divert forces to help the Italians.
2. Hitler shouldn't have set his sights on Moscow - that could have avoided Germany into facing a two-front war. The allies would have seen it too risky to near impossible to advance into Berlin from Africa.

But Hitler was a madman. Lucky for the world he was one otherwise we'd be living on Earth-X.

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "losing side". The Japanese naval advance in the Pacific was stopped at the Battle of Midway Island. After that, they were pushed back almost to their home islands. The American forces took Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa shortly before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Yes, perhaps "losing side" was not the correct term. What I meant was that fighting the battles in the Pacific had already cost the U.S. a great deal in terms of soldiers on the ground. Japan was, in no way going to agree to an unconditional surrender, which meant that the U.S. would have to send in additional forces into Japan, inevitably costing even more men. If the bomb had not been dropped, the war would have gone on much longer. I'm not saying that the Allied Powers wouldn't necessarily have still won but, with the way the U.S. was already forced to be split up, if the Axis Powers had made different decisions with their strategy, the outcome could have definitely been different.

Umm... not, not "on the cusp". The Soviets launched an all-out program to build an atomic bomb after their spies stole the designs that American and British scientists came up with in the Manhattan Project. But even with that "head start", they didn't actually test an atomic bomb until 1949 (4 years after the US did). This topic is covered in great detail in Richard Rhodes' book "The History of the Atomic Bomb".

I'm not familiar with his book, Stewart. From the accounts that I have read, the Soviets most likely would have developed the atomic bomb sooner had they not been slowed down by the German invasion. If Rhodes book is correct, which I assume it is, then I guess they weren't as close as what I thought.

Some historians I do believe think the atomic bombs of the 1940s weren't really game changers in a military sense, but in terms of political and morale impacts they were indeed huge. The Americans were whipping up the A Bomb and the Germans really did not have much at all in that aspect, so even if the war in Europe was longer, I think as Steward said the bomb would have intimidated them quite a bit. And if the Germans won the war in Europe, they would also have to somehow successfully invade the US. In real life they couldn't even land in Britain.

One thing that might have helped was if Japan attacked Russia. To my knowledge Stalin threw his Siberian reserves at Hitler because he knew Japan wasn't coming. But then, Japan was getting pretty tied up.

I've read Japan's industrial power just wasn't ready for a long war. If the US lost some battleships and carriers they would be rebuilt, if Japan lost some it was game over. So that made even some of their victories Pyrrhic. I think their situation was win fast, or lose, and they didn't win fast.

Proud mention is, my ancestors gave them a hard time in China too. They were winning, but at massive cost.

Yes, Germany had a very real possibility of winning the war. If they had had a different strategy. Yes, the United States did have the A-bomb, but they weren't even going to enter the war until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

Germany pretty much plowed through France and western Europe in a matter of weeks and it wouldn't have taken them long to overtake GB had they not been distracted. If Germany, Italy and Japan would have concentrated their efforts on defeating Western Europe before moving south (Africa) and east (into S. Union & U.S.), they could have built their strength through acquisition of territory and resources. Then, with a stronger front, they could have moved against S. Union and by the time the U.S. decided to get off its a$$ and help, it would have been too late.

As it was, winning the war was not easy for the Allied Powers. When the U.S. entered the war, France and most of Western Europe was occupied by Germany. Axis forces were also outside of Leningrad and Moscow and the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. So these countries were all fighting from a defensive position. The U.S entered the war with Japan as its main target but, was obligated to fight on the other fronts too, so the U.S. forces had to be split all across Europe, Asia, the Pacific and N. Africa. Add to that, the U.S. was fighting on unfamiliar foreign territory in rough conditions. The results from the strain on US forces was evident in the fact that before the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the U.S. was on the losing side in the Pacific.

It was only through a combination of luck and skill on the beaches of Normady, dwindling German resources and the atomic bomb on Japan that the allies were able to get the upper hand. If Hitler would have not let his own delusions get in the way of his generals decisions, the outcome could have been very different indeed.

Btw, the Soviet Union was also on the cusp of developing a bomb when the US dropped it on Hiroshima. Imagine what the world would be like today if they had been the one's to drop it on Japan first.

"the Soviet Union was also on the cusp of developing a bomb when the US dropped it on Hiroshima. Imagine what the world would be like today if they had been the one's to drop it on Japan first. "

Umm... not, not "on the cusp". The Soviets launched an all-out program to build an atomic bomb after their spies stole the designs that American and British scientists came up with in the Manhattan Project. But even with that "head start", they didn't actually test an atomic bomb until 1949 (4 years after the US did). This topic is covered in great detail in Richard Rhodes' book "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B008TRU7SQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511837141&sr=1-1&keywords=atomic+bomb+richard+rhodes

"The results from the strain on US forces was evident in the fact that before the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the U.S. was on the losing side in the Pacific. "

I'm not sure I know what you mean by "losing side". The Japanese naval advance in the Pacific was stopped at the Battle of Midway Island. After that, they were pushed back almost to their home islands. The American forces took Tinian, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa shortly before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

No. As a practical matter 1945 atomic bombs were not yet military war-winners. They were effective politically, but militarily they duplicated what we were doing to the Japanese and Germans with heavy bombers and conventional explosives. That cuts the other way...adding a few atom bombs to our air attacks on Germany would have increased the devastation, but not made a critical change in the outcome of the war, unless they were built earlier than we did. There is a recent SF novel that looks, with very hard SF in the analysis, the path the leads to a US atom bomb in June 1944.

However, the German industrial production was not greater than that of the British or the Soviets, and their record on deploying upgraded weapons ina useful way was worse. The Italians get much undersold in this regard...they were the only Axis power to deploy a four-engine heavy bomber in noticeable numbers.

There is an obvious exception here. If UeberMaedchen(OverGirl)'s pod had delivered her as an infant to Germany in, say, 1920 in Bavaria she would have met Herr Schickelgruber in 1935 or so, at which point Germany wins.

The Axis powers (mostly Germany) winning seems to be a common alternate history scenario, but is there a way it could have actually happened without a sci-fi or mystical scenario in which they gained some form of superweapon?

Nerdy talk time. I read some history on my spare time so feel free to correct me on anything wrong.

Germany had two allies, Italy and Japan. Italy wasn’t very powerful or successful, and to my knowledge was defeated in most battles. Japan was fairly successful early on, but they weren’t a match for the technology and industry of the United States, nor were they prepared for getting bogged down in China in a long war.

Hitler himself kicked a hornet’s nest. He succeeded early in France, but he could not defeat Britain. He thought he could take the USSR, but the Soviet people proved tough and determined, and held his forces against tremendous losses.

When the US joined the war in the west it was kinda game over, I believe. He was against Britain, roughly Germany’s equal, the Soviets, insanely resilient and grows more powerful by the day, eventually becoming the country that finishes him off, and now the USA, a new major power that probably was actually far stronger than Germany in military and industry.

I don’t think Hitler had a chance out of that 3v1. Any suggestions on how he might have done it?