Whats your favorite what-if wartime scenario?

96,893 Views | 369 Replies | Last: 12 hrs ago by Ghost of Andrew Eaton
aggiejim70
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AG
Thank you little BQ buddy, that was a typo. I meant 1860.
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
Smeghead4761
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aggiejim70 said:

What if the Democrats won the election of 1860. No Civil War, freedom of the slaves put on hold for who knows how long. Lincoln just an answer to a trivia question. Somewhere in the neighborhood of a half a million lives saved.
When you say "the Democrats", are you assuming that the party could have united on a single candidate (remember, Breckenridge was the Dem candidate in the slave states, and Douglas in the Free States; having two candidates is what cost them the election, probably) or that Douglas would have been able to beat Lincoln even with Breckenridge running? (I don't think Breckenridge was on the ballot in states with enough electoral votes to allow him to win)

In either case, the Republicans would have come back again in 1864, 1868, and so on, and blocking the expansion of slavery in the territories would have remained THE central plank in their party platform. That was what the slave states really objected to, because if all of that land west of Texas and north of Oklahoma (still Indian territory at the time, with slavery legal) became free states, then they would lose their remaining leverage in the Senate (the free states already had the majority of the seats in the House, due to their much larger population). That's why they wanted more slave states (including constantly pushing for the annexation of Cuba.)

A Republican would have been elected president eventually, on that Free Soil platform. And the Southern states would have (probably) reacted by seceding. The question would then become, would the reaction of whomever sat in the Oval Office be the same as Lincoln's?

aggiejim70
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AG
Interesting and valid points. Looks to the south was running out of options for additional slave states. I'm not sure where it would be practical north or west of Texas. Maybe Oklahoma, but that's about it. On top of that, my guess is the vast majority of settlers in California and the western territories in the 1860's were freesoilers.(sp?).
The person that is not willing to fight and die, if need be, for his country has no right to life.

James Earl Rudder '32
January 31, 1945
Smeghead4761
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Most of the land acquired from Mexico after the Mexican War was south of the Missouri Compromise line, and thus technically slavery would have been allowed, even if the traditional slave labor cash crops (cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo) wouldn't have fared well there.

Texas was the last slave state admitted, in 1845, at which time, IIRC, the breakdown was 14 slave and 14 free states. After that came Iowa (1846) and Wisconsin (1848), both part of the Louisiana Purchase and north of the MO Compromise line California in 1850 (free state, even though most of the state was south of the line, but they immediately sent two Democrat pro-Southern Senators to Washington), and then Minnesota in 1858 and Oregon in 1859. So that's 5 more free states, and 10 free state Senators, added after Texas. Definitely something to make Southerners anxious.

That was a big part of the motivation for the Kansas-Nebraska Act - to try to get at least one more slave state out of that territory, even though the entire territory was north of the MO Compromise line. The fact that Missouri really didn't want to be surrounded by free states on three sides also played a part.

I will note that Kansas was admitted as a free state Jan. 29, 1861 - after the Congress elected in 1860 had been seated, before Lincoln's innauguration, and after the first 6 deep South states had already seceded.

What I find somewhat ironic is that there were enough slave states that they could have blocked any Constitutional amendment ending slavery, if not in the House and/or Senate, then by keeping it from reaching the approval of the required 3/4 of the states, if they had simply remained in the Union.
Smokedraw01
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Langenator said:

Most of the land acquired from Mexico after the Mexican War was south of the Missouri Compromise line, and thus technically slavery would have been allowed, even if the traditional slave labor cash crops (cotton, tobacco, rice, indigo) wouldn't have fared well there.

Texas was the last slave state admitted, in 1845, at which time, IIRC, the breakdown was 14 slave and 14 free states. After that came Iowa (1846) and Wisconsin (1848), both part of the Louisiana Purchase and north of the MO Compromise line California in 1850 (free state, even though most of the state was south of the line, but they immediately sent two Democrat pro-Southern Senators to Washington), and then Minnesota in 1858 and Oregon in 1859. So that's 5 more free states, and 10 free state Senators, added after Texas. Definitely something to make Southerners anxious.

That was a big part of the motivation for the Kansas-Nebraska Act - to try to get at least one more slave state out of that territory, even though the entire territory was north of the MO Compromise line. The fact that Missouri really didn't want to be surrounded by free states on three sides also played a part.

I will note that Kansas was admitted as a free state Jan. 29, 1861 - after the Congress elected in 1860 had been seated, before Lincoln's innauguration, and after the first 6 deep South states had already seceded.

What I find somewhat ironic is that there were enough slave states that they could have blocked any Constitutional amendment ending slavery, if not in the House and/or Senate, then by keeping it from reaching the approval of the required 3/4 of the states, if they had simply remained in the Union.


It's my understanding that the wording of the Missouri Compromise only dealt with lands considers in the Louisiana Purchase.
Smokedraw01
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aggiejim70 said:

Interesting and valid points. Looks to the south was running out of options for additional slave states. I'm not sure where it would be practical north or west of Texas. Maybe Oklahoma, but that's about it. On top of that, my guess is the vast majority of settlers in California and the western territories in the 1860's were freesoilers.(sp?).


As I understand it, CA voted to enter the Union as a free state but then the slave states argued that CA didn't have the right to decide that for themselves. I could be wrong or oversimplifying it.
Smeghead4761
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It wasn't that admission of California was opposed per se, or that the Southern states didn't believe that California couldn't bar slavery. They just opposed the admission of ANY new free state, as this would upset the balance, and not in their favor. (The fact that this would 'block' the expansion of slave territory to the Pacific didn't help.)

The result was the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state, organized New Mexico and Utah as territories with 'popular sovereignty' on the slave question (New Mexico had already applied for admission as a free state and been turned down due to Southern opposition), settled the boundaries of Texas in exchange for federal assumption of Texas debt, banned the slave trade in DC, but allowed the continuance of slavery there, and established the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which overrode the personal liberty laws of several Northern (mainly New England) states.
ArmyTanker
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.
ArmyTanker
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I would love to know how Hannibal crossed the Alps with his army and elephants.
Eliminatus
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AG
Would Stalin have fought to the end himself in Moscow? If he dies, does the Soviet Union continue to fight too?
Ghost of Andrew Eaton
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What if Grant had gone to Ford's Theater and was killed with Lincoln?
If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.
chickencoupe16
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AG
What if TF-14 hadn't been turned back from defending Wake? What if TF-11 had been sent with 14?
Ciboag96
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What is the US Army decided to hang around Mexico city, install a governor, made it a state of the union....
Smeghead4761
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Ciboag96 said:

What is the US Army decided to hang around Mexico city, install a governor, made it a state of the union....
They would still be fighting the insurgency there today, 165 years later.
Ghost of Andrew Eaton
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Ciboag96 said:

What is the US Army decided to hang around Mexico city, install a governor, made it a state of the union....


The treaty to acquire Mexico would have probably been rejected by the Senate.
If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.
Smeghead4761
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Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

Ciboag96 said:

What is the US Army decided to hang around Mexico city, install a governor, made it a state of the union....


The treaty to acquire Mexico would have probably been rejected by the Senate.
They didn't let that stop the annexation of Texas. Of course, the Texans wanted to be annexed, so there's that difference.
Ghost of Andrew Eaton
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Langenator said:

Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

Ciboag96 said:

What is the US Army decided to hang around Mexico city, install a governor, made it a state of the union....


The treaty to acquire Mexico would have probably been rejected by the Senate.
They didn't let that stop the annexation of Texas. Of course, the Texans wanted to be annexed, so there's that difference.


And Texas wanted slavery and had significant cultural links to the United States. Even then, it also took ten years to annex Texas.

During Grant's presidency he tried to get the US to annex Santo Domingo and it was soundly defeated in the Senate, apparently mostly due to racial issues.
If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.
coupland boy
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AG
What if we hadn't nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

I've gotten into discussions of sorts in the comments section of YouTube videos on the Manhattan Project. There are always those that are convinced that we dropped the bomb merely as a cold war first move and Russia declaring war is what "really" made Japan realize they were done.

I get it - we didn't tell Russia we had the bomb despite their knowing about it. Not in our circle of trust. But I think it did speed up their timeline to declare war on Japan.

Anyway I'm convinced any country in a brutal war with a fanatical enemy like Japan was at that time does the same thing we did.
chickencoupe16
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AG
Dan Carlin addressed this in his Supernova in the East Part 6. He was pretty convincing.

If I remember correctly, one of the points that he made was we were estimating 1 million casualties from an invasion. That number seems crazy but historically in the Pacific, we had often underestimated casualties, so the reality might have even been north of 1 million. That's just one of several arguments for dropping them.
coupland boy
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AG
I recall reading about this before - Eisenhower seemed to voice disagreement with its use.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-to-confront-painful-truths-about-using-the-atomic-bombs-on-japan
JABQ04
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AG
Great what if. I don't think the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was what did the Japanese in. I believe the atom bombs did. Even after all that there was still an attempted coup to keep the emperor's surrender message from being broadcast. Only way we would have won the war with out the bombs was either go in and root then out like we had to do on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo, Or Okinawa and cost us hundreds of thousands of lives as well as millions of theirs or starve their nation to death, like we were already doing, and kill millions of their people. Dropping the bombs was what won the war.
Eliminatus
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AG
coupland boy said:

I recall reading about this before - Eisenhower seemed to voice disagreement with its use.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-05-27/its-time-to-confront-painful-truths-about-using-the-atomic-bombs-on-japan
Sorry, Replied to wrong poster. Meant for Coupland boy

The only other alternative was a true blockade and starving the island. I see no other options. A-bomb, invade, starve.

America chose the one that protected American lives. The casualty estimates were horrendous. I'll have to find it again, but I think it was something like half the landing zones were expected to fail and something like 95% casualties in the first waves. These estimates were calculated from precedent and had no reason to play up or skew the numbers. The planners back then knew it would be a bloodbath and I have no reason to doubt them. Crazy to think about really. I have always been the mindset that the A-bombs were in fact the least deadly outcome possible and even most humane on a macro scale. I know that itself can cause quite the debate but the fight into the interior in every civilian population center would have been something that the world had never seen on that scale. I am absolutely convinced of that.

Plus, the rebuilding efforts were also enhanced by the fact that we did not, ya know, destroy the entire country in flame and steel and blood.

I do wonder how close the blockade option was being considered. Anyone know?
JABQ04
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AG
We basically had Japan cut off anyways. Our subs coupled with surface units and air power wiped the Japanese navy and shipping out. I don't think it would have taken much more to completely cut them off for the rest of the world. However, men would have still died off the coast and in the air, and while at smaller numbers the American public was tired of the war too and didn't want to see our men dying for another year or two until the Japanese surrendered
coupland boy
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AG
JABQ04 said:

Great what if. I don't think the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was what did the Japanese in. I believe the atom bombs did. Even after all that there was still an attempted coup to keep the emperor's surrender message from being broadcast. Only way we would have won the war with out the bombs was either go in and root then out like we had to do on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo, Or Okinawa and cost us hundreds of thousands of lives as well as millions of theirs or starve their nation to death, like we were already doing, and kill millions of their people. Dropping the bombs was what won the war.


Good point on the military coup attempt. Plus, all this was after months of terrible fire bombing of their cities.

Starvation of Japan would likely have doomed our POWs as well. In my view our country had buried enough of its young men.
Ciboag96
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What if the suitcase bomb HAD killed Hitler?
mic suede
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Ciboag96 said:

What if the suitcase bomb HAD killed Hitler?

They surrender to UK/US 1 month after dDay, and end the Europe war 1 yr early? How does that speed up the pacific war, and is an invasion of Japan always delayed until we have the nukes? How do the Allies carve up Europe with Stalin/USSR having 1yr less 'momentum'? What does that mean for the next 40 years?
chickencoupe16
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AG
mic suede said:

Ciboag96 said:

What if the suitcase bomb HAD killed Hitler?

They surrender to UK/US 1 month after dDay, and end the Europe war 1 yr early? How does that speed up the pacific war, and is an invasion of Japan always delayed until we have the nukes? How do the Allies carve up Europe with Stalin/USSR having 1yr less 'momentum'? What does that mean for the next 40 years?

What if the bomb kills Hitler but the coup fails? With Germany recovering from the turmoil of a failed coup, does Rommel leave Normandy? With Hitler dead, does Rommel find himself in command of the 4 reserve SS divisions? Is Rommel able to pre-position the armor closer to the beaches between the assassination and June 5th?

Even with everything going right for Germany after Hitler's assassination, I don't think they can overcome Allied airpower and defeat the invasion but how many more casualties do we take? It probably gets real ugly for the airborne troops (am I here to type this) and the British. Cherbourg and Caen probably hold out even longer. Do we close the Falaise Pocket? What if the Germans withdraw across the Seine much earlier than Hitler allowed? I've read estimates that the loss of men and material in The Battle of The Bulge shortened the war by a year as opposed to using them in defense.

Taking Hitler out but replacing him with someone just as fanatical yet more willing to listen to the generals about tactics probably lengthens the war. On the other hand, if he's replaced by the right type of person, I think you're spot on. And how many lives does that save? No more strategic bombing, no more Holocaust, no more bloody Eastern front battles. At the same time, the Germans didn't know about the Allied plan to carve up Germany, so how many that fled the Red Army slowed by German defenses are now gobbled up and remain in East Germany?
BQ78
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AG
I think your timing on the D-Day invasion and the assassination attempt are off. D-Day was before von Stauffenberg's bomb.
chickencoupe16
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BQ78 said:

I think your timing on the D-Day invasion and the assassination attempt are off. D-Day was before von Stauffenberg's bomb.



But WHAT IF it wasn't.....?





Yeah, you're absolutely right. I'll leave it up as punishment.
FTACo88-FDT24dad
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AG
What if the French don't fail to seize the opportunity to decimate the gridlocked German army as they were about to invade France. I seem to recall that at the time, the British and French had the opportunity to basically bomb and strafe the Germans as they were gridlocked and backed up for miles on the way into France. The French generals were advised of this moment by British intelligence and they simply refused to believe that it was true, passing on the opportunity.

If I have any of that wrong please correct me.

How many Japanese die if we invade or blockade vs. how many Japanese died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Don't the numbers support dropping the A-bombs as a way to actually save some Japanese and American lives?
coupland boy
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AG
FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

What if the French don't fail to seize the opportunity to decimate the gridlocked German army as they were about to invade France. I seem to recall that at the time, the British and French had the opportunity to basically bomb and strafe the Germans as they were gridlocked and backed up for miles on the way into France. The French generals were advised of this moment by British intelligence and they simply refused to believe that it was true, passing on the opportunity.

If I have any of that wrong please correct me.

How many Japanese die if we invade or blockade vs. how many Japanese died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Don't the numbers support dropping the A-bombs as a way to actually save some Japanese and American lives?


Some accuse the US of generating those numbers after the fact to help justify the dropping of the bombs. I don't see how anyone could see what happened on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and not get a pretty high number. The folks in charge of the Japanese military clearly didn't care about their troops and civilians and were in fact trying to make it as costly as possible for the US toward the end.
BQ_90
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AG
Instead of wasting troops in Africa, what if Nazies either invade Spain or force Spain to let them drive and take Gibraltar and then also seize Crete. Then basically the Germans control the Med. Those troops where wasted trying to get Italy more territory that they couldn't get on their own.

I guess Spain just was tired of war and sat it out, even though Germany helped Franco. Figured they could have taken Gibraltar or let the German ride thru and take it.
Ghost of Andrew Eaton
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BQ_90 said:

Instead of wasting troops in Africa, what if Nazies either invade Spain or force Spain to let them drive and take Gibraltar and then also seize Crete. Then basically the Germans control the Med. Those troops where wasted trying to get Italy more territory that they couldn't get on their own.

I guess Spain just was tired of war and sat it out, even though Germany helped Franco. Figured they could have taken Gibraltar or let the German ride thru and take it.
If Spain had allowed Germany to ride thru, they open themselves up to being attacked by the Allies, right?
If you say you hate the state of politics in this nation and you don't get involved in it, you obviously don't hate the state of politics in this nation.
chickencoupe16
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AG
Does it matter a whole lot in the end if Spain does join? My though is no. Spain was even weaker than Italy was and we all know how great the Italians were in WWII. Sure, Spain adds bodies and probably Gibraltar to the Axis fight but I don't know that that helps too terribly much because Hitler was too focused elsewhere.

But what if Hitler takes Gibraltar and pushes against the Middle East even harder? What if he delays Barbarossa until May 1942 and uses the time and troops to take oil fields in the Middle East? There's suggestions that Stalin was preparing for war with Germany but was just too far behind. If that's not true, delaying Barbarossa until '42 doesn't hurt Germany much at all. When it does come, the Germans don't have to push so hard against Russian oilfields. Not only that, but maybe they get a month or two head start on the winter and have better cold weather gear.

With Barbarossa delayed and Hitler maybe not riding quite so high, does Germany declare war on the U.S. in December of '41?

I think that nearly every what if of the European Theater comes down to the two front war.
Smeghead4761
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coupland boy said:

FTACo88-FDT24dad said:

What if the French don't fail to seize the opportunity to decimate the gridlocked German army as they were about to invade France. I seem to recall that at the time, the British and French had the opportunity to basically bomb and strafe the Germans as they were gridlocked and backed up for miles on the way into France. The French generals were advised of this moment by British intelligence and they simply refused to believe that it was true, passing on the opportunity.

If I have any of that wrong please correct me.

How many Japanese die if we invade or blockade vs. how many Japanese died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Don't the numbers support dropping the A-bombs as a way to actually save some Japanese and American lives?


Some accuse the US of generating those numbers after tjr fact to help justify the dropping of the bombs. I don't see how anyone could see what happened on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and not get a pretty high number. The folks on charge of the Japanese military clearly didn't care about and was in fact trying to make it as costly as possible toward the end.

That was, quite literally, Japan's entire strategy at that stage of the war - to force the U.S. to pay such a high price in blood that we would grant terms more lenient than those outlined in the Potsdam Declaration, which the Japanese government had publicly rejected.

I think the Japanese army had moved so many troops onto Kyushu by August of 1945 that they would have been at or near parity with the invasion troops had Olympic been launched. Granted, the American troops would have been far better supplied, with vastly superior firepower, but the Japanese would have been fighting from prepared defenses. President Truman and the U.S. Joint Chiefs were already, at the time the bombs were dropped, looking at alternatives to the Kyushu landings.

The Japanese had around 900,000 troops on Kyushu. The U.S. plan didn't call for the occupation of the whole island, just enough to support landings on Honshu near Tokyo, so killing all of them wouldn't have been necessary, but even if half of them were killed, you're talking 2-3 times the combined death tolls of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That doesn't count the dead in the rest of what was left of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The British were scheduled to launch Operation Zipper, the invasion of Malaya, in September 1945. In addition to further battle deaths from that fighting, it would have led to the massacre of all Allied POWs in that particular command area. Had that come to pass, and been publicly known, things would likely have gotten even uglier.

Even further, there were thousands and thousands of deaths of non-Japanese Asians - Chinese, Vietnamese, Malays, Indonesians - in Japanese occupied Asia every month. All of those lives were saved by the Bomb.

It's impossible to say how long it might have taken for continued bombing and blockade to bring the Japanese to surrender. As noted, the Brits would have gone ahead with the invasion of Malaya, and people would have continued to die in Japanese occupied Asia, in addition to unknowable numbers of Japanese who would have died from starvation and disease. Such a campaign would have also been politically very difficult - the war in Europe was won, and there would have been tremendous pressure to bring the boys home. Starving Japan into submission would have worked, but probably not on any sort of politically acceptable timeline.
 
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