Surely the plan for the war was to quickly conquer and occupy enemy territory while still valuable as the German economy would not survive a lengthy war?
In a way, I can sort of get why they might want to take the UK out. If the UK did pack it in, the US forces would likely also go home, and then Germany could dream it still had a hope in hell of resisting the Soviets - although presumably part of that fantasy was persuading France and the UK to change sides and pitch in against Communism.
The Germans could have used the same resources to build ~3000 Panzer IVs: Enough to equip over 20 Panzer divisions with tanks. Admittedly, they didn't have the manpower for another new 20 Panzer divisions by then, and I suppose if you include all the other stuff (artillery, guns, armoured cars, lorries), you'd get much less than 20 Panzer divisions. But they could have re-equipped their existing ones, most of which were permanently underequipped by 1944.
A lesson all should take away from WW2 is that we should never underestimate how much an unwillingness to fight can level the playing field.
What's funny, is that they probably could have done more with trucks than more tanks; most of the German army (with the exception of Panzer units) throughout the war used horses to move their equipment around such as artillery pieces and other logistics.
en.wikipedia.org
This wouldn't have done them much good because they didn't have any oil but then you're getting into the whole territory of how the entire war was unwinnable for Germany unless you completely change the terms of it by making the Nazis not raving fascist antisemites.
You know you're doing something right when your tank looks more ridiculous than something built by the orks in Warhammer 40k.
It's why Nazi Victory AU scenrios tend to either invovle a masssive change in starting conditions or end up making some assumptions that come across as unrealistic as best.
Uh...I don't think that's a real tank. That looks like an M3 Lee tank with extra cannons stuck on it, which if they were real would leave no room for the crew (and I think that front lowest gun would be sitting in the transmission).
I like the idea of towing the UK onto the French coast so the Nazis can invade without dealing with the channel.
Maybe. The Germans had a perpetual, critical problem with low oil supplies. Arguably, that their army was still relatively backward in its dependency on horse-drawn transport was, in ways, not worth them rectifying. In things like the Battle of the Bulge, you see their strategic planning specifically aiming to capture supply dumps because otherwise the offensive would be hampered by them constantly running out of fuel.
No, that really is the sort of stupid stuff they might get to prototype stage. There are several Russian tanks with a similar notion - like one central turret and up to six mini-turrets with lower calibre cannons. A few less absurd got into production like the T-35, but most never got past the drawing board. They're intrinsically failtastic because all that weaponry adds a lot of weight and size, therefore requiring fatal compromises to the armour or too much strain on the engine and drives. I cannot help but think many were not designed by experienced, professional tank designers.
Most nations designed something like this. The British designed the Tortoise, it's mostly what the Soviet mass-produced IS2 / IS3 was designed to do, and the Germans of course created the Elefant and Jagdtiger (although more tank destroyers than "bunker-busters"). They weren't intrinsically stupid, though: it's more just that the situation they were designed for turned out to not really be an issue: fortifications didn't turn out to be the obstacles feared. In terms of antitank warfare, the creation of ammo such as APDS meant there was little benefit in ever-increasing armour either as relatively light guns were far more effective, so heavy tanks rapidly went the way of the dodo after WW2 as well.
That still doesn't work because the Nazis thought nuclear physics was Jewish science so the German nuclear programme didn't really go anywhere.
Partly true. The guys leading the German nuclear physics program mostly knew what they were doing, and in practice managed to hold the line against political interference to get research done. The bigger problems were that nuclear research was low priority in Nazi Germany's R&D and lack of expertise having driven the many Jewish physicists out.
Sadly it's not, it is a fake.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I mean, there are many reasons this doesn't work.
