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Comment by rich_sasha | Hacker News Reader

I would like that to be true.

Did Germany stand a chance to win WWII? Probably not, or at best a slim chance; it made huge, surprising victories against most of continental Europe, but it just picked on too many opponents. By the time the US was in, it was (slow and deadly) game over. They believed their own BS and went ahead with it regardless.

I guess the risk here is that Russia or China could also believe their own BS and do something stupid regardless. Russia clearly did in Ukraine.

As far as I can tell, WWI started kind of because everyone wanted a war. All the belligerents were convinced this is their moment to shine, 3 months and it will be all over, with [shiny new territory]. Alas it was not to be so.

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Why not?

They "incorporated" what they could (Austra, Czechoslovakia), then quickly conquered Poland and France. Capturing Moskow seemed not off limits had they started earlier. I don't want to place bets if it was possible to hold the Soviet Union. Alternatively, if they hadn't attacked the Soviet Union at all.

It is plausible that they would have kept most of Continental Europe, ending with a stalemate with the UK (and no war with the US). Alternatively, not attacking the Soviet Union, and conquering the UK (still, I am not sure if it would work without getting the US to the war). I am happy it didn't work that way - especially as a Pole.

Indeed, I think people tend to forget that Germany declared war on the US - which I have seen described (in a fantastic bit of understatement) as "most puzzling":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...

Germany didn't believe their own intelligence figures of US manufacturing output. They were laughed to scorn as impossible. Some hubris there, certainly.

Some level of hubris everybody has.

Go read any thread here about Russia-Ukraine, almost unanimously most comments read like Russia is destined to lose, no matter what they do. You will also read how China is absolutely a weak military power and will lose in case of a Taiwan invasion.

Patriotism like many other emotional attachments can make you blind to your biases. The common theme among most US citizens in this very forum is American exceptionalism - That is - USA will win no matter how many wrong moves it makes, its opponents will lose no matter how many right moves they make.

Its not hard to imagine Germany with its universities, industries, scientists, engineering prowess etc- To have similar illusions of grandeur.

China isn't weak, but for now they still lack the airborne and amphibious lift capacity to invade Taiwan. This has nothing to do with patriotism, it's a simple matter of geography and weather. There are only a few months per year when sea conditions make an invasion possible, and only a few ports or beaches where an invasion force could potentially put ashore. Look at a map. Those points are relatively easy for a smaller force to defend. In a few years China might build up the necessary capabilities, but that situation doesn't obtain today.

China could absolutely wreck Taiwan's civilian infrastructure with air and missile strikes. But that doesn't mean they can invade and conquer the main island.

You don’t need to bomb Taiwan. A blockade of 1-2 years would be plenty. They don’t need to fire a single missile at the mainland.

A blockade is an act of war. If China instituted a blockade then Taiwan would certainly respond kinetically. The situation would escalate from there, and the US would eventually be drawn into the conflict.

US doesn't go around bombing and invading every nation it wants to control either. Greyzone ops, color revolutions etc. There are many ways in which China could achieve its goals without a full fledged war.

> You will also read how China is absolutely a weak military power and will lose in case of a Taiwan invasion.

For some reason, my YouTube feed has been hijacked by low quality videos swearing up and down that China’s economy will collapse tomorrow.

Thank you for the interesting link! It seems to hold the key to why Germany declared war against the U.S. - essentially it was a condition of Japan’s first strike against the U.S.:

On 28 November 1941, Ribbentrop confirmed to Hiroshi Oshima, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, what Hitler himself had told Japanese foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka: that if Japan got involved in a war with the US, Germany would enter the war on Japan's side. When the Japanese asked for written confirmation of this, Hitler provided it, along with Mussolini's consent.

Further down clarifies that the agreement only triggered for defense, not offense

> According to the terms of their agreements, Germany was obliged to come to the aid of Japan if a third country attacked Japan, but not if Japan attacked a third country. Ribbentrop reminded Hitler of this, and pointed out that to declare war against the US would add to the number of enemies Germany was fighting, but Hitler dismissed this concern as not being important,[3] and, almost entirely without consultation, chose to declare war against the US, wanting to do so before, he thought, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt would declare war on Germany.

I know this is a serious thread, but it reminds me of Norm’s bit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uXdtafGdIVM

Nazi Germany stood a reasonable chance of winning WW2. They made many mistakes as well as underestimating the resistance that Britain would provide, but victory was certainly feasible through 1941 or 1942.

Did it really? It will always be hard to estimate, I read articles arguing either way.

But it seems, certainly, from the perspective of 1930s, WWII would mean for them attacking a coalition of Poland, France and UK, and attacking Russia and USA down the line (I understand this was always the plan). UK and France were the two dominant superpowers of the era, with US on the way up.

It's not, IMHO, incomparable to the current situation. Only a madman would attack the "West", be it NATO, EU, or its allies in Asia; the chances of victory are perhaps not negligible, but expected gain certainly very poor. But it seems there's something in human history to disregard such calculus and plough on regardless.

> Did it really? It will always be hard to estimate, I read articles arguing either way.

That's certainly fair, and a definite delta from your previous "probably not, or a slim chance" statement. Thanks for considering alternate views.

In retrospect all history seems like it followed the inevitable course. I think we can certainly say that Nazi Germany were confident enough in victory to start the war.

Off-topic - I highly recommend watching the show "The Man in the Highcastle" on Amazon. It depicts a future in which Germany and Japan won World War II.

And it’s a pretty meh show

There's room for debate, but several High ranking members of the German military thought it was suicidal and actively tried to get the UK and other's to nip it in the bud before it got out of hand. And note, these weren't "good guys" trying to save the world or anything, they were just slightly less reckless bad people in most cases.

> The high-ranking German military leaders believed that if Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia or any other country, Britain would declare war on Germany.[52] MI6 was of the same opinion. The British declaration of war would have given the General Staff, it thought, both the pretext and the support for an overthrow of Hitler, which many of them were planning because of the prevailing "anti-war sentiment of the German people".[53]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris

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