With the Pacific War already sapping a lot of the US's naval and amphibious assets, though, could the US really have mounted an effective invasion while fighting a two-front war almost entirely on its own hook? For that matter, a big part of why the US Navy was able to take and hold the initiative in the Pacific was that they started the party by turning the Japanese back at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Then, a month later, they more or less cripple the IJN at the Battle of Midway. Both of these were naval battles centred around a specific land-based objective, and it was that nature that allowed them - especially Midway - to be decisive. I'm not sure a crossing of the Atlantic would allow for that kind of engagement. To my mind, it would favour the kind of hit-and-run warfare that the German U-Boats excelled at.
An invasion of Europe conducted from across the ocean would require the United States - and Canada. Don't think we'd let you go it alone. - to force an Atlantic crossing against an otherwise unopposed Kriegsmarine. Without the Royal Navy or the combined forces of the Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Corps to threaten them or restrict the area in which they could operate, the German forces would have a much easier time hunting the amphibious forces than in the normal timeline. Also, any transatlantic amphibious landing wouldn't have the kind of air support the Normandy landings did, even if the USN withdrew some of its carriers from the Pacific to assist, while the Luftwaffe would definitely be out in force.
GrahamKennedy wrote:So if you were in Vosk's position, what could you do to help the Germans win WWII?
While the show focused on such things as plasma weapons, there are a number of things that Vosk could do to improve the Nazi forces that would require far less in the way of resources. For instance, by supplying an improved inertial guidance system as well as a half-decent radar seeker head, they could probably turn the V-1 flying bomb into a half-decent anti-shipping missile, which would truly make life miserable for any convoys trying to cross the Atlantic. Also, the Germans had been working on a wire-guided anti-tank rocket with a two-and-a-half kilo HEAT warhead. A little help with the rocket motor and the guidance system, and that turns into a poor man's TOW missile. Paveway-style guidance packages for their bombs, or Maverick-style Air-to-Ground missiles would probably be a snap too. Hell, just improving the reliability of the Tiger tank, or introducing the Panther early and in greater numbers would make a major difference.
An entirely transatlantic invasion seems to me like it would be pretty tough. They'd have air superiority, they'd be defending from prepared positions, since there are a limited number of beaches that one
can perform a landing on, and only some of them have the necessary features to serve as a proper beach-head for such an endeavor. With a few helpful hints from Vosk, they could whittle away at the American and Canadian forces as they crossed the Atlantic, then fight the kind of ATGM-heavy combined-arms mobile defense NATO had planned for the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. They could use constant air raids and hit-and-run tactics to chew up the Allied column as it advanced through France, and then once they had them sufficiently softened up and over-extended, they could turn around and lay a blitzkrieg on a technologically inferior, offensively-focused enemy and force the invasion back into the sea.
Even if the Allies managed a Dunkirk-style evacuation, they'd have to face the Kriegsmarine again all the way home. Then, with the American and Canadian forces ground up by the fighting in Europe, they'd be a lot more vulnerable to having their invasion repaid in kind. Again, Vosk's assistance could do the Germans a world of good here. Some intelligence on the locations of American air bases and a couple of ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads - or sub-launched V-1 flying bombs with similar payloads - could cut down on the air superiority margin, or else keep it from being too much of a deciding factor. Aerial refueling - the first experiments were conducted in the 1920s - could also help here. As for sealift capacity, they wouldn't necessarily have to build as much as we think, because they could concievably have captured a portion of England's available ships in port when they took the UK.
A failed invasion of Europe might be just the kind of thing that would make an invasion of North America that much easier for the Nazis. With the US and Canada going it alone - not to mention, the US dealing with Japan half a world away - life gets pretty miserable for the Allies. The Big Three are now just the Big One, the ANZACs are likely tied up by the Japanese, and if Vosk can talk Hitler into trusting Rommel a bit more, things only get worse.
I dunno... maybe I'm just being contrary, but that's my take on it.
Warning: Erwin Schrodinger will kill you like a cat in a box. Maybe.
