bintananth
behind a desk
This is a decent explaination of why I dislike "what if's" where the Axis are expected to win.With WWII, it's less an 'it was absolutely and utterly impossible on every level,' and more 'as far as things can be impossible, it was.' If the stars had aligned and every single Allied leader was incompetent, while every single Axis leader operated at the level of Rommel or Yamamoto, they might possibly have been able to win.
But, at the start of the war...
Germany had no ability to meet its own oil needs during peace-time, and lacked the naval capability to invade Britain. The only reason it succeeded against France, was French incompetence. Something a lot of people aren't aware of, is that the British were building combat aircraft faster than the Germans were during the Battle for Britain.
The Japanese lacked the strategic reach and logistical capacity to even try to invade the mainland US, and the ability to supply not only their own oil needs, but also their own steel needs. Hitting Pearl Harbor stretched their logistical capabilities, and they lacked the industrial capacity to make up for losses in a remotely meaningful manner.
People say 'It wasn't possible for the Axis to win,' because both powers not only lacked the ability to strike at their primary enemies in a manner that could knock them out of the war, they lacked the ability to gain that ability in a meaningful time-frame.
It would have taken Japan five to ten years of continuing unmolested military build up to have a chance at hitting just the American West Coast.. Germany similarly would have needed five to ten years of intense naval and aerial build-up to have a meaningful chance at invading Britain. Both of these scenarios would also require that British and American military strength remain static at pre-war levels.
As soon as the leadership of the Anglosphere decided that they were willing to stay in the fight long enough to win, the Axis were functionally doomed.
And this isn't even going into the variety of minor reasons they were functionally doomed from the start.
They were always going to lose and it wasn't going to be close in any somewhat realistic scenario where the US says "hi".
US-550 in SW Colorado between Silverton and Ourey was actually more expensive to build than a superdreadnaught with 16" guns. Only seven of those were completed. An arms limitation treaty resulted in every other ship designed to use guns that big getting scrapped, cancelled, or turned into an aircraft carrier.