“This is how history went after McCoy changed it … Because ALL this lets them develop the A-bomb first. With the A-bomb & with their V2 rockets to carry them, Germany captured the world.”
- Spock, from the Star Trek Episode, “The City on the Edge of Forever.”
In this episode we look at one of the most common “What If?” questions in history: the plausibility of the Axis powers (specifically Germany) winning the Second World War. Also, probably the most complicated. Could Germany have been better off waiting to start the war? What if Hitler’s strategic errors are removed from the equation? Was the Allied victory inevitable? While these and other questions at first glance to make such counterfactual assessments a rabbit hole way too deep, when the nature of the Second World War is examined closely and longstanding historical patterns in warfare are kept in mind, the reasoning for the Allied victory becomes clear and, consequently, potential paths the Axis powers could have taken for a different outcome are few.
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