Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Trugrit

Of course the Germans could not have launched a successful invasion of the U.S. with the one
Exception being that if Nazi Germany had developed nuclear weapons before the U.S.
In that scenario all bets are off on the outcome of the war.

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ORIGINAL: Yaab

Swamps, alligators... You say Texas would have been a better invasion spot? Alligators with guns?

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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

I have a friend who just started watching the show. What I'm looking for is reasons why it could never happen. I've already tried to explain that no, Germany wouldn't have ever been able to invade America, nor would Japan. I understand that it's a historical fantasy and that the themes of the show can be separated from the setting, etc., but I just find the setting beyond far-fetched and in the realm of implausible. Please confirm.

I brought up lack of ships, lack of fuel, lack of surprise (presumed aerial detection), lack of shipping again, US technological and manufacturing advantage, etc. The little nuggets and bunches of details that this forum's community has in their brains would be really helpful .

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ORIGINAL: Yaab

Technically, the US forces just had to cross the English Channel in amphibious mode in order to invade France. I guess the Germans would have had to use Cuba as a staging area for their invaion of Florida then.

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The premise is certainly as plausible as Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South. Meaning: impossibility offered solely for lighthearted entertainment purposes.

P.S. I have no idea what The Man in the High Castle is. I've never heard of it. So my opinion is based solely upon your brief description. :)

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ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

Well, GB is too far... and invading Cuba or any other Caribbean island would be as difficult as invading the US... because the USN would not remain idle while this invasion is taking place

That said, I saw some Nicaraguan/ Cuban communist guerrillas invading Florida in that 1985's classic; "Invasion USA"
but thanks god Chuck Norris wouldn't allow it

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

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ORIGINAL: Yaab

Technically, the US forces just had to cross the English Channel in amphibious mode in order to invade France. I guess the Germans would have had to use Cuba as a staging area for their invaion of Florida then.

The US and UK were just barely able to invade France in 1944, but to do so they had to do the following:

1) Make sure the bulk of the German army was bogged down thousands of miles away. Most people don't know Operation Bagration was timed to come right after the Normandy invasion to make sure the Germans didn't transfer any units to the west.
2) Completely control the Atlantic. Subs won't do it, a blue water navy was needed. Subs can deny control of a body of water to someone else, but they can't control a body of water themselves. Germany would have had to build a blue water navy at least as big as the navies the US and UK were committing to the Atlantic. This was beyond their industrial capacity.
3) Build a large fleet of amphibious vehicles and other specialize landing ships for the invasion.
4) Support the invasion with a huge supply train from the home country.

Any move from Germany to ally with Cuba along with the slightest interest from Cuba would have likely triggered an American invasion of Cuba. One of the things that brought the US into WW I was Germany making alliance offers to Mexico with promises that Mexico could keep large swaths of the US after they defeat the US. Mexico wisely declined.

The US is the only country to ever win a full scale war on two fronts at once. Between the large population and massive industrial capacity, the US was the toughest opponent in the world in 1940. And then attempting an invasion of the US would have been complete folly without some major advantage nobody had. The entire New World is a natural fortress. The only navy in world history that ever had the lift capacity to pull off an invasion of the US was the USN circa 1945 and even then it would have been tough.

Gaining a foothold in the New World is tough. The US has followed the Monroe Doctrine since the 1820s and other powers have not messed with the New World much since then. The Monroe Doctrine says the US will react strongly and quickly to any outside power trying to establish a military presence anywhere in the New World. Even if the isolationists were in power, they would have reacted to any move by Germany in this hemisphere. A beachhead on Cuba would have been throttled in short order by air power and the USN if not a counter invasion of Cuba.

Trying to just hold on to a presence in Cuba would have been at least as difficult if not more difficult than it would have been for Japan to hold onto Midway.

And subduing the US population if they could have invaded would have been an even tougher task. All but one successful occupation of the 20th century had at least a ratio of 20 soldiers per 1000 population. And that is only after the civilian population has mostly been disarmed. It takes closer to 100 per 1000 when there is an active insurgency. The US had a population of 132 million in 1940. That would have required an occupation army of about 2.6 million troops and an invasion force of about 13 million. The entire German army in 1940 was 6.6 million men. The total who served through the entire war including the Volkstrum was about 18 million.

Assuming Germany had conquered all of Europe, they would need millions of garrison troops to control all the conquered territories or see mass uprisings they couldn't subdue. That would have tied down million of troops there. Then they would have had to man a vastly larger navy and merchant marine, which would have tied down millions more, leaving them without enough men for the invasion and occupation force for the US operation.

It's just plain impossible.

The Man in the High Castle is a Phillip K Dick novel. He tended to use his premises as a launching point for some deeper message or explore some facet of human nature. I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the show, the premise is too far fetched for my tastes, though there is a parallel worlds/time travel series by John Barnes that had a successful invasion of the US scenario that was feasible. The protagonist went to a parallel 1960 where the Allies had been almost completely defeated because Germany was given advanced technology by another group from another parallel world in the late 1930s. It's an entertaining and fast moving story, I've read the series twice and I almost never read books twice.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

It's not to say Germany probably couldn't have made atomic weapons eventually, but it probably would have taken a fair bit longer than the Manhattan Project took.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

I'm not sure what 1940s A-weapons get you against the US in that era.

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ORIGINAL: ny59giants

Around 1980 or so there was a fantasy board game called "Invasion: America" put out by SPI (I think). It was futuristic game of Europe being overrun by Soviets, China, and then Central/South America becoming a force. The USA is invaded by three large coalitions. The problem is that America has some serious terrain to overcome and the only place that the invaders had terrain on their side was up through Texas. I do like some of these "what ifs" but the American guerrilla force would be something to deal with.

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ORIGINAL: ny59giants

Around 1980 or so there was a fantasy board game called "Invasion: America" put out by SPI (I think). It was futuristic game of Europe being overrun by Soviets, China, and then Central/South America becoming a force. The USA is invaded by three large coalitions. The problem is that America has some serious terrain to overcome and the only place that the invaders had terrain on their side was up through Texas. I do like some of these "what ifs" but the American guerrilla force would be something to deal with.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

It's not to say Germany probably couldn't have made atomic weapons eventually, but it probably would have taken a fair bit longer than the Manhattan Project took.

I'm not sure what 1940s A-weapons get you against the US in that era. They were small and the US was a 50% rural nation. A huge, heavily-armed one.

If you just want to kill the urban population gas is a lot cheaper and easier. If you want to destroy the industry then fire works too. But after you burn the cities and destroy the factories you still don't control the US or get any production out of it. And has been said, we have guns.

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

It's not to say Germany probably couldn't have made atomic weapons eventually, but it probably would have taken a fair bit longer than the Manhattan Project took.

I'm not sure what 1940s A-weapons get you against the US in that era. They were small and the US was a 50% rural nation. A huge, heavily-armed one.

If you just want to kill the urban population gas is a lot cheaper and easier. If you want to destroy the industry then fire works too. But after you burn the cities and destroy the factories you still don't control the US or get any production out of it. And has been said, we have guns.

I think it would be more of a breakdown of political will than the national resolve of the country to keep fighting.

If your enemy drops a bomb that vaporizes your biggest cities in an instant, it takes a special kind of leader to put that to one side and demand that the fight is carried on in the countryside with shotguns and hunting rifles. If that leader isn't in the right place at the right time, then what good is it?

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

It's not to say Germany probably couldn't have made atomic weapons eventually, but it probably would have taken a fair bit longer than the Manhattan Project took.

I'm not sure what 1940s A-weapons get you against the US in that era. They were small and the US was a 50% rural nation. A huge, heavily-armed one.

If you just want to kill the urban population gas is a lot cheaper and easier. If you want to destroy the industry then fire works too. But after you burn the cities and destroy the factories you still don't control the US or get any production out of it. And has been said, we have guns.

I think it would be more of a breakdown of political will than the national resolve of the country to keep fighting.

If your enemy drops a bomb that vaporizes your biggest cities in an instant, it takes a special kind of leader to put that to one side and demand that the fight is carried on in the countryside with shotguns and hunting rifles. If that leader isn't in the right place at the right time, then what good is it?

Ah, the European demand for centralized control.

Here it wouldn't take a leader giving orders. County level or even lower. Extended families even. Get your gun, kill anyone wearing THAT uniform. Once you do kill them pick up their hardware. Rinse, repeat.

The US population in 1940 was about 130 million. Mostly educated, mostly, even the rural women, familiar with firearms. And really, REALLY pissed off at invaders. I knew about 1775 at the same time I learned to read (age 4). And the Brits weren't even invaders, sorta kinda.

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

It's not to say Germany probably couldn't have made atomic weapons eventually, but it probably would have taken a fair bit longer than the Manhattan Project took.

I'm not sure what 1940s A-weapons get you against the US in that era. They were small and the US was a 50% rural nation. A huge, heavily-armed one.

If you just want to kill the urban population gas is a lot cheaper and easier. If you want to destroy the industry then fire works too. But after you burn the cities and destroy the factories you still don't control the US or get any production out of it. And has been said, we have guns.

I think it would be more of a breakdown of political will than the national resolve of the country to keep fighting.

If your enemy drops a bomb that vaporizes your biggest cities in an instant, it takes a special kind of leader to put that to one side and demand that the fight is carried on in the countryside with shotguns and hunting rifles. If that leader isn't in the right place at the right time, then what good is it?

Ah, the European demand for centralized control.

Here it wouldn't take a leader giving orders. County level or even lower. Extended families even. Get your gun, kill anyone wearing THAT uniform. Once you do kill them pick up their hardware. Rinse, repeat.

The US population in 1940 was about 130 million. Mostly educated, mostly, even the rural women, familiar with firearms. And really, REALLY pissed off at invaders. I knew about 1775 at the same time I learned to read (age 4). And the Brits weren't even invaders, sorta kinda.

Would the insurrection during the War of Independence have been as widespread if the Continental Congress decided to sue for peace after Brandywine?

In the novel the US surrender is precipitated by two atomic bomb attacks that cause the US Government to sue for peace. Hearing that over the radio is a pretty big incentive to co-operate. I could understand the situation you're imagining if the government had taken the opposite tack - run for the Rockies and blast calls for insurrection all over the airways, but if you hear your government on the radio telling you that it's over, people tend to accept that it's over. August '45 in Japan is proof of that.