Nazi Super Weapons

Hitler's main downfall was giving the battle of Britian over to the Luftwaffe instead of invading Britian with his army, which had ran over everyone up to that point. When the Luftwaffe couldn't conquer Britian, that gave the US a supply point and a launching pad for D-Day. It also forced him to fight a 2 sided war when he decided to invade Russia.

 

Um, Antisemitism was the cornerstone of Nazi ideology.

 

Actually it was 2 fold, without the pressure of the US from the West and South in Africa and then in Italy, Germany would have been able to contain Russia.

Not to mention all the planes and steel the USA supplied to Russia as well....

While Russia had great tanks and a ton of soldiers, the fact that Stalin had whiped out the officers ranks prior to the war left a leadership vacuum in the military.

The reason germany was stopped was more about the winter than the Russian troops...

DD

 

I love this type of stuff -- thanks for posting.

 

Those rocket planes were hellaciously fun to use in BF1942.

Although you died about 99% of the time.

 

The natter?

DD

 

For a humorous review of Nazi super weapons, check out My Tank is Fight

 

Banned? Nonsense.

I saw the video you were talking about. The experiments were in the early 30's in the southeastern states of the U.S.A., and the same clinics where these took place gave Hitler an honorary doctorate for his "work" on human genetics and the quest to find "the perfect race." I remember seeing this video in an anthropology class. The video is, shall we say, "clandestine" because it is not shown everywhere. The results were atrocious and cruel, and at times they "disposed" of the "outcomes."

I was both embarrassed, saddened, and depressed to see that video. I wonder where the world could have gone had Adolf gotten away with much more than what he did. No problemo, Mr. Royals, sir.

 

Thanks for starting this thread as I too am a fan of the World Wars and enjoy learning more about them if I can.

 

Whatever it was, it was fast, it was loud, and it never successfully landed.

lol.

 

Hitler had to invade Russia because he was running low on oil to fuel his huge fleet of aircraft/tanks/vehicles. In the absence of a need for additional fuel, he would have never done this. A lot of energy-related scientific discoveries were hatched by Germany during this time period, including the Fischer-Tropsch process, which is gaining relevance again today. This is a process used to create synthetic gas and ultimately oil/diesel/jet fuel from coal and natural gas. Germany was launching this process because they were rich in coal reserves during that time period. The process is heavily used in South Africa by Sasol and increasingly used worldwide. The DoD has been investing a lot of money into this domestically to produce jet fuel for its air fleet.

 

I don't know too much about the history of Germany's super tanks but they certainly seem impractical. One thing I noted about the Maus though is how closely it resembles a US mobile artillery project, I think its called the Crusader but can't find a link for it, that has long been a congressional boondoggle.

The other problems with the super tanks are that I'm guessing that for the amount of fuel they would use you wouldn't get much return from a sustained tank battle. That to me seems like a no go especially when Germany was runnign out of fuel.

 

If you're talking about the XM2001, I thought they canceled it.

 

The problem though was while Germany was a great land force they didn't have much amphibious capacity. I remember seeing a show where the Germans looked at converting river barges used in Holland and Belgium as landing craft for an invasion of Britain but they couldn't handle rough seas. At the sametime an invasion of Britian would require air superiority to cover the invading force. This is one reason why the Allies didn't invade Europe until they had air superiority themselves.

 

Yeah I think that it. I hadn't heard they cancelled it but that's good to hear.

 

Nice thread to learn some extra WWII facts...

 

I'm also a WWII buff. Can somebody recommend a good book that covers it?

 

Wernher von Braun, a Nazi, was the father of the American space program.

 

I actually did some reading up on this a while back from some WWII website. The super tanks weren't suppose to be used in the traditional sense. They were mobile artillery/fortresses used for reinforcing Nazi shores against war ship. The idea was bore about from the failure of the Maginot Line. The Nazis learned from that cement bunkers can be circumvented. It was never meant for attacking other tanks.

 

Just to give you an idea, the 'gold standard' tank of WWII, the T-34 weighed 26 metric tons, the Crusader which you speak of weighed 39 metric tons before it was canceled, the heaviest thing the USA has, the M1 Abrams weighs 61 metric tons, and the Maus weighed 192 metric tons. And the Maus was supposed to be a standard heavy combat tank. It was so big it couldn't even be transported by rail cars.