If Britain lost the battle, and Germany was able to manufacture a successful invasion and capitulation, then the last realistic launchpad for the liberation of Europe would be gone. More guns and aircraft? The process of doing so was halting and hesitant at first, and complicated by the countrys division during the Cold War. The democratic traditions of the United Statesand, to a lesser extent, those of France and the United Kingdomexerted a powerful influence on West Germany, whereas the Russian Revolution, Leninism and Stalinism, and the social and political precedent of the Soviet Union provided the model for the socialist state in East Germany. But perhaps it is the way those lists are worded, in that each calls out countries that never lost a war, and conflicts that ended indecisively arent considered a defeat. The sites of former concentration camps were turned into large-scale memorials to the victims, with elaborate exhibitions that now took a more comprehensive approach to their subject, replacing the partial view of the Cold War years. Here are a few possibilities in which history could have been very different for Germany: If twentieth-century Germany had a tombstone, it would say "This is What Happens to Those Who Fight on Two Fronts". Still, by the late 1990s, most people in Germany accepted the validity of these accounts, and a majority of Germans had come to believe that their country bore the major responsibility for the extermination of some six million European Jews by the Nazis. If the German fleet could not break the British blockade, impose its own blockade of Britain, or enable a German amphibious invasion of England, then what was it good for? By the end of the 1950s, however, some groups in the city began to argue in favor of preserving some of these buildings as sites of memory, rather than obliterating themand with them, not unintentionally, the memory of Nurembergs role in the Nazi movement. Has germany ever won a war? This challenged the myth of the "clean Wehrmacht" says Fulbrook, and "forced a shift in conversations, with young people now interrogating their grandparents in new ways.". Listed: Countries That Have *Technically* Never Lost a War. In a stunning reverse of the picture of Napoleonic Wars, they lost nearly every sub-war at the start of 100 years war - but by the year 116 of that war, the overall conflict was won by the French. The few memorial sites that appeared on the grounds of the old concentration camps in West Germany said little or nothing about the camps themselves, instead paying homage to the victims with Christian monuments organized according to religious denomination. The West German authorities themselves launched numerous prosecutions for war crimes, culminating in the trials of Auschwitz camp personnel in 196365. France had a population of 39 million in 1914, versus Germany's 67 million. Depending on how that one gets chalked up will finally determine if Canadas perfect track record continues. The Germans probably wouldn't have been able to enjoy their victory for long. Instead, the United States became the arsenal of democracy and Germany's defeat was all but assured. A strategic masterstroke? When did England go to war with Germany? List of wars involving Germany - Wikipedia Despite keeping much of their army in France, the Germans were still able to drive Russia out of the war by 1918. In 1941 Germany only produced 2,900 tanks a number that increased to 17,300 by 1944! Two organizations in particular have emerged to object to the governments policies in this area. The refugee crisis has sparked an intense backlash against postwar norms of tolerance. By placing them where people would walk over them, the artist intended to remind passersby of the complicity of ordinary Germans in the violence. Two American attempts to invade and forcibly annex Canada, in 1775 and 1812, both . It was widely claimed that Nazi war crimes had been committed by the SS and other elite units, while the mainstream Wehrmacht army had - like most of the German population - remained ignorant of and uninvolved in the Holocaust. Other than the tragic loss of the lives of the soldiers who served in Vietnam, and the cost of equipment, the United States didnt technically lose. Plenty of novels paint a dark portrait. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies. The Russian navy was negligible. Germans by and large wanted to focus on the gigantic task of rebuilding and reconstruction and to forget the Nazi past and the crimes in which, to a greater or lesser extent, the vast majority of them had been involved. But the re-opening of the Neue Wache as a "Memorial Site for the Fallen of the World War" in 1931 revealed sharp divisions within German society. Why isn't BBC presenter being named by the media? From a military perspective, advancing to Belgium was a brilliant move to sidestep north of the French armies and fortifications on the Franco-German border, and then turn south to capture Paris and encircle the French armies from the rear. "The vast burial grounds are a reminder of the past that also confront the living with the consequences of war and violence," it says. Historians, most notably at Munichs Institute for Contemporary History, began to research the Nazi period seriously and critically, as the documents seized by the Allies for the Nuremberg prosecutions were returned to German archives. There was mobile warfare in Russia and Poland, amphibious invasions in Turkey and guerrilla campaigns in East Africa. The Prince of Wales is visiting Berlin on Sunday to participate in Germany's National Day of Mourning. Parts of an unfinished great hall became the home of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. It was really the only time Nazi Germany had actually declared war on an enemy, and it needed not to have happened. A shared sense of responsibility for the crimes of Nazism arguably aided the process of reunification, as Germans had to find a new source of national identity beyond the liberal democratic values or communist visions that had shaped the respective political cultures on either side of the Berlin Wall. They lost 170,000 men to just 12,000 Germans in one of history's most famous battles of encirclement. During the Spanish Civil War, which has been called a dress rehearsal for the Second World War, Germany's Luftwaffe perfected its strategy of using dive bombers and close-support attack aircraft. The Allies partially agreed to the terms Germany and the U.S. had negotiated. Pastor Werner Krtschell is descended from a distinguished Prussian family of clerics and cavalry officers. Three ways of making this impossible have been proposed. Their love affair across one of the world's most heavily guarded borders had begun on the virtual battlefields of a video game where players bond over having one another's back . Britain had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. West Germans, the vast majority of the formerly united countrys population, seemed to suffer from a generalized historical and moral amnesia in the postwar years; on the rare occasions when they spoke about the Nazi dictatorship, it was usually to insist that they had known nothing of its crimes and to complain that they had been unfairly victimized and humiliated by the denazification programs and the victors justice of the war crimes trials. Ideally, Germany could have found diplomatic means to have fought against Russia alone without war with France, or vice-versa. If Germany had won on the Western Front, it would have acquired some French territory and maybe Belgium. The Costs of Expanding the Alliance Outweigh the Benefits, The Most Important Lesson of the Wagner Rebellion Is the FSBs Failure, Privatization and the Hollowing Out of the U.S. Defense Industry, Its Time to Expand the UN Security Council, Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy, Published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Would the Third Reich have triumphed if it had developed jet fighters sooner? From a military perspective, advancing to Belgium was a brilliant move to sidestep north of the French armies and fortifications on the Franco-German border, and then turn south to capture Paris and encircle the French armies from the rear. While the United States quickly transitioned to a wartime economy that had companies like IBM making rifles instead of typewriters and GM making tanks instead of cars; Germany was producing consumer goods all the way until 1942 when Albert Speer took over as Minister of Armaments. The concentration camps went through a similar series of phases after the war, reflecting changing German attitudes to the Nazi past. More importantly, it added the Royal Navy. Whenever a new war starts all other factions get boni because they are less players. There's a movie for that. Danish-German war: Denmark: County of Holstein Hanseatic League: Defeat. In view of the harmless nature of these new functions, it seemed wasteful to demolish the structures that housed them. From then on, Germany had to spread its forces between West and East, while supporting its Austro-Hungarian and Turkish allies. Read about our approach to external linking. Can 'good cop' Yellen help fix US-China relations? Another dubious claim made on many lists is that North Korea never lost a warbut that's another technicality because the Korean War . Reinforcing that is a belief that the ground for Germany's Nazi catastrophe was laid by the militarism of the Prussian state that unified the country in the 19th Century and led it into World War One. The United States has officially declared war 11 times during five separate military conflicts. At the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, October 2015. Since the end of the Cold War its work has also included the highly sensitive task of recovering soldiers' remains and maintaining German military cemeteries in parts of Central and Eastern Europe where the most terrible Nazi crimes were committed. They arrived too late forTannenberg, while depriving the Western offensive of vital troops at Germany's best time to overcome France and possibly end the war. Now Germany faced not just France and Russia, but also the immense military and economic resources of the British Empire. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, it does suggest that the Brits have exercised a lot of military might throughout their history, in all corners of the globe. While its militia played a small role in the War of 1812 against the United States, which ended in a draw, Canada didnt actually send its military overseas in a fully-fledged conflict until 1899 during the Second Anglo-Boer War. There was mobile warfare in Russia and Poland, amphibious invasions in Turkey and guerrilla campaigns in East Africa. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) can proudly claim a5-0 recordin major wars fought, not to mention two Palestinian intifadas as well as a series of armed conflicts in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, and in addition, Israel has remained in existence without ever even ceding territory as the result of the war. 1.8M subscribers in the AskHistorians community. The sense that no matter what, the conflict would have been one long, miserable slaughter, a four-year live performance of "Paths of Glory." Yet the Russian advance also frightened German Army Chief of StaffHelmuthvonMoltkeinto transferring three corps from France to East Prussia. The entry of Britain and her empire added nearly 9 million troops to the Allies. It is true that Vietnam is a modern state that achieved independence from France following the First Indochina War in 1954. This event sparked the German Revolution. Werner Krtschell, a Protestant pastor in Berlin, told me that "the wounds of the Second World War are very vivid until today," as children were left without fathers, wives without husbands. Japan had attacked the United States, so Germany was never required to join with its Axis partner. 2023 Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Moreover, Communist North Vietnam did achieve its main goals of defeating South Vietnam and unifying the country, and that occurred after the United States pulled out its military ground forces. German cities had been reduced to rubble, and millions of Germans had died; as a result, everyone could see what Nazism had ultimately led to. Meanwhile, the canal that camp inmates had been forced to build was leased to a commercial enterprise, as was a wing of the former camps brick factory. In World War II the U.S. beat the Japanese. For one, the United States isnt generally on those lists, as it is argued that the USA lost the Vietnam War because its opponent, North Vietnam, conquered the South Vietnamese. Despite ambitions of becoming a global colonial empire, Germany was still a Continental power in 1914. They relented in the 1950s under Cold War pressures. Even with everything noted above, Germany and its European partners could have still won the war were it not for Germany's declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941.
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has germany ever won a war
