Could the Axis have won?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Given the sum of their actions and policies, I am exceedingly glad the Axis were beaten. When Mussolini's Italy was the "progressive" choice, the list of choices more or less sucked. As it was, we allied with Soviet Russia -- FDR luke-warm at best, WC holding his nose -- to defeat them.

That said, there were any number of points that the Axis mis-played that could have generated a victory -- provided that victory was realized no later than January of 1943.

1. Germany could have opted out of any surface unit larger than a DD and turned the steel/yard space and the like over to U-boats. They began the war with 57 U-boats and never had more than 40 at sea prior to 1942, with the U-boat fleet not breaking the 100-at-sea mark (the Mark Raeder himself said would be required for six months to stangle England's economy) until July of 1942! The pocket battleship program, the excellent battlecruisers, even the battleships -- no matter how threatening -- were simply misplaced resources. Source: http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-boatPolicy.htm

2. Germany could have realized exactly what it had with its panzerkorps. Throughout the first half of the war, German high commanders slowed down the armored spear-heads for fear of them being cut off and defeated in detail -- despite the fact that it was the shock they were generating that protected them best. Runstedt slowed the advance near Dunkirk, allowing the withdrawal of thousands of troops who could have been netted. Again, in 1941, Hitler halted Guderian and the other spear head commanders of Army Group center and turned them South to secure the Ukraine, halting the advance on Moscow for over a month. Had they struck forward, Moscow would have fallen and taken a huge chunk of the Soviet infrastructure with it. Stalin may well have been forced to sue for peace on unfavorable terms. Source: Stolfi's Hitler's Panzers East: World War II Reinterpreted

3. Hitler failed to bring Franco into the war. The loss of Gibraltar would have crippled British offensive efforts in the Mediterranean, allowing Axis forces to concentrate in defense of a Frontal assault in the West as well as, potentially, pushing Turkey into the Axis camp and opening up the Caucasus from both sides.

4. Hitler could have had someone slip a blood-pressure increaser into one of FDR's martinis in 1940. President Garner would not have authored Lend Lease, would not have given destroyers to GB, and would certainly not have actively aided the RN in the North Atlantic without benefit of Congressional approval. In short, no FDR and England would largely have been stuck soloing against Germany while an isolationist USA either focused solely on Japan or even stayed home depending on Japanese actions. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nance_Garner

5. Japan could have struck, in 1941, against Dutch possessions in the Pacific as a follow on to their efforts against French possessions. Though strategically they felt that they had to secure the Phillipines to do this (which required them to throw the "brush back" pitch against the USN at Pearl), it is possible that politically, they would have been in a position to force the USA to declare war against Japan to protect the Dutch (hated by the locals and not having received a lot of good press in the USA). The USA, particularly if #4 above occurred, would have been hard-pressed to get the votes for war from a largely isolationist public, especially Dutch "press" for the treatement of their Indonesian subjects wasn't exactly pristine. Absent the USA or a direct attack on Singapore, they might have forced the British to accept a fait accompli without war and thereby netted the oil etc. required for continued expansion in China.

Lots of other tactical things might be added, but these are some that might have made a strategic difference.