The Invasion of India: How Germany Could Have Won World War II
Hitler had many opportunities to end World War II with a victory, but he failed to take advantage of any of them. And it is particularly sad for modern Germans—who were humiliated by the victors in that war—that their former Führer failed to take advantage of what was, in essence, the most brilliant military plan—instead of invading the USSR and marching straight into Stalin’s lair, to execute a flanking maneuver and, via Egypt and the Middle East, break through to the jewel in the British crown—India.
I was never particularly interested in history; I only got into it about 10 years ago—when, with my degree in geology, I was offered a job at a military history museum. Well, at my new job, I picked up all sorts of information that struck me as interesting, and I decided to become a historian—not a certified one, of course, but, so to speak, a freelance historian.
But that’s not the point; the point is that I remember very well how, back when I was still a student, I got into a heated discussion over some issue with our philosophy professor, who, as it turned out, was also a military history enthusiast. And so, while discussing Valentin Pikul’s famous novel *Barbarossa*, which had impressed us both, this professor told me in confidence that Hitler was an even bigger fool than anyone realizes.
And he told me that, instead of attacking the USSR, that madman Führer should have sent to Africa not just Rommel’s meager army, but half of all the forces he had at his disposal at the time. In 1941, before opening the Eastern Front, Hitler had every opportunity to capture Egypt and Palestine instead, via Libya and Greece. He had an abundance of excellent generals—Rommel, Guderian, and many others.
It’s clear that among the Germans’ allies in that region—the Italians—there were still those soldiers, but they could have been stationed in the rear and tasked with handling logistical issues, while the main armies should have been sent to Iraq and Syria. And there, the Arabs—who hated the British and the French—would have readily helped the Germans rid the entire Middle East of the long-despised colonizers.
It is clear that the threat from Stalin remained, but, first, the Germans could have deployed half of their Wehrmacht to defend Poland and Romania, and, second, the rapid advance of Hitler’s powerful army toward Baku and the Caucasus would have forced Stalin to abandon any plans for an attack on the Third Reich and to defend the southern borders of the USSR. As a last resort, these forces could have been reinforced by the Hungarians and Romanians, who, although they were no slouches as soldiers either, were irreplaceable as cannon fodder.
But Hitler wouldn’t even have needed to attack the USSR at that moment—his main priority was to block the Suez Canal and seize all the oil fields in Iraq and Syria, which would have been more than enough to fund all his military plans. Not only that—he would have redeployed his fleet, which he had absolutely no use for in Europe, to the Indian Ocean, and would have paralyzed all communications from India to Great Britain. Hitler enjoyed enormous support not only among Arabs, but also in Iran and even in India, and together with the Japanese, he could subsequently have divided up all of Asia, stockpiled the necessary resources, and then he could finally turn his full attention to the USSR.
But Hitler wasn’t a fool for nothing. In 1940, he squandered the opportunity to finish off Great Britain by blocking its fleet with minefields at the approaches to the English Channel and launching an amphibious assault on London. Instead, he had a simply brilliant chance to cut Britain off from its colonies, from which it derived everything necessary to keep the country from starving. But he failed to take advantage of this opportunity as well, instead spreading his forces thin across several fronts, where he predictably lost one after another in spectacular fashion.
I remember how the professor drew a plan on a map for me—one that Hitler could have easily carried out, with 100 percent success. After all, if not him, then his generals must have realized that a blitzkrieg would have been easier to carry out against the outnumbered British and French forces in Egypt and the Middle East—where there are no Siberian winters— than against the Red Army in Russia, which had so many rivers that there weren’t enough bridges to span them all. And the British and French in that region didn’t have nearly as much military equipment as Stalin did, not to mention human resources. Even half of Hitler’s army could have easily crushed this weak resistance and advanced not only to the southern borders of the USSR but all the way to India.
Meanwhile, the Americans were practically standing still at that moment and had no intention of intervening in Hitler’s war against the British colonies. Hitler would have had virtually the entire Mediterranean Sea and the western part of the Indian Ocean at his disposal. And this vast region contained resources that even Stalin could not have dreamed of; and so, by seizing all these resources, Hitler could have gone head-to-head with the USSR. It’s clear that all the allies in that region, again, ranging from Spain and Italy to Turkey and Iran, were militarily worthless, but at the very least their neutrality was valuable, and Hitler would have handled everything else on his own.
But Hitler didn’t go through with such a brilliant plan, which is why he failed.
Well, there were many wonderful plans that Hitler never carried out—but why? If he didn’t understand them himself, surely the brilliant minds around him must have understood them. Surely he wasn’t such a fool that he couldn’t be persuaded to do something that would have benefited Germany?
However, what happened, happened. Hitler squandered many opportunities to win World War II, which suggests that he was, in fact, a limited individual. Here’s an example: if he hadn’t waged war not only against the Red Army but also against the Soviet population, he would have had a much better chance of defeating Stalin; at the very least, there wouldn’t have been so many partisan units and entire formations emerging behind Wehrmacht lines, which, without much effort on Stalin’s part, destroyed at least 1 million German soldiers and 4,000 tanks, not to mention hundreds of thousands of other pieces of equipment, including locomotives and other rolling stock, that never even reached the front.
Can you imagine the damage Hitler inflicted on his own army by treating the conquered Soviet population that way? What kind of intelligent conqueror would do something like that? Only a fool.
And why did Hitler declare war on America, thereby provoking the invasion of American troops into the Old World? Roosevelt would never have been able to declare war on Germany if it hadn’t been for this foolish act by Hitler. To this day, historians and other experts are still puzzled—why did Hitler do such a thing, thereby making the collapse of the Third Reich inevitable?
All in all, Hitler did a lot of harm to Germany, and he failed to do many things that could have secured a guaranteed victory for the country. And as for the most important, the surest plan—one that would have guaranteed the Third Reich a swift victory—he didn’t even consider it. Instead of seizing the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean with all his available forces, he invaded Russia and came to a bloody end there. And along with him, the entire German nation also hit a wall—a nation that had many intelligent politicians and military leaders, yet not a single one of them did anything that would have led anyone to recognize them as intelligent after the Third Reich’s defeat.
They have remained fools in historical memory, just like their madman Führer, who very easily—and even triumphantly—created the Third Reich, but then did everything in his power to bury it with a resounding crash, along with all the Germans, who will not recover from such a terrible national collapse anytime soon.
But on the other hand, it’s just wonderful that Hitler turned out to be a fool, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been the Germans who would have had to mourn, but everyone else—including us. But the Wehrmacht’s plan to invade India was very good—I wonder how world history would have unfolded if it had actually been carried out?
Source — https://dzen.ru/a/aDGPK4kqYWGOCBO9
