How Hitler, Germany Could Have Won WWII

Could Hitler and Germany have won World War II?

Yes, according to a local historian who has studied the war extensively.

Mike Hansen, a former history teacher at Minneapolis Southwest High School, listed numerous decisions made during the war by both the Nazis and the Allies, which could have resulted in a different outcome. 

Hansen spoke recently to several dozen people—including several U.S. veterans of World War II—on the eve of the end of the Greatest Generation exhibit at the .

“The two finalists for British prime minister in May of 1940 were Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill,” Hansen said. “Halifax wanted to sue for peace with Germany in return for the continuation of the British Empire while Churchill wanted to fight on.”

“Had Halifax been named to replace Neville Chamberlain, the outcome would most likely have favored Germany.”

After the British evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, Hitler could have gone into England. As fate would have it, he didn’t.

During the Battle of Britain, the Germans lacked long-range bombers that could carry bigger bomb loads.

Hansen said the entire war was, for Hitler, “about exterminating people he hated—the Jews, the Slavs and the Communists.”

Invading the Soviet Union in June 1941 was inevitable for Hitler. Nothing was going to stop him from going into Russia. Four years later, the Eastern Front proved as fatal for Germany as any action taken in the war by Hitler.

“From the very beginning, Hitler should have struck directly at Moscow and taken it because that would have toppled the Soviet Union. Instead, he hit on a broad front from Leningrad to the Ukraine and dispersed his forces far too much."

Hitler’s ally, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, got his forces into trouble in both North Africa and Greece, resulting in his having to turn to Germany to bail him out of these tough situations.

“Germany having to go to Greece delayed the invasion of the Soviet Union by at least a month,” Hansen said. “This resulted in the invasion running into fall and winter and the inevitable horrific Russian weather, the same thing that halted Napoleon in the early Nineteenth Century.”

Once Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the USSR) was underway, the Germans could have struck a treaty with the Ukrainians—who basically did not like their Russian rulers—and led the two to join forces.

“But, again, Hitler’s purpose was extermination,” Hansen said. “The Ukrainians were Slavs and, in his mind, needed to be liquidated.”

As the invasion of the Soviet Union bogged down, Hitler personally took control of the army, replacing or reassigning all of his commanding generals.

“Hitler was a terrible tactician and had proved this time and time again prior to his taking overall command,” Hansen said. “Nothing changed for the better after that.”