If You Were Sent Back In Time To Shorten World War II, How Would You Do It?

Let's say you would be sent back to the USA of the year 1935 with $20,000. You couldn't be killed or wounded, but you could be captured. You would return back to the present day the moment the war ended, with about a month having passed in 2008 (or whenever you read this). Your goal is to either shorten the war or to reduce the number of dead and wounded, however you see fit. Before you went back to 1935 you'd get a month to study up on WWII history and the like.

So what would you do?

Comments

[steveegg]

A very interesting philosophical question. Before I begin to seriously think about an answer, are we talking about a particular theater of WWII, or the entirety of the war?

[Nigel Ray]

Well, I'd certainly take advantage of the month of study. $20,000 was a lot of money in 1935. Hmmm. IIRC, Hitler is already in power. I wonder if there would be some way to use the money to accelerate the Manhattan project, not by making the science itself faster but by getting it started sooner? That would clean up both theatres.

[Tom McMahon]

One theater is fine, with the assumption that it would speed up the end in the other.

[Nick]

Interesting question. The quick answer might be, assasinate Hitler. I'm sure I could pull it off with 20 grand, especially if I couldn't be killed.

Now, the reason against that is that assasinating the leader of a country causes war. HOWEVER... if you do it in 1935, 4 years before the start of the war, Germany would be in a far worse position to do damage. There was a lot of build up in those 4 years.

On the third hand, Hitler was a moron late in the war, and probably helped the Allied cause more than hurt it in the end.

On the fourth hand, Hitler was an extremist (to put it mildly) and refused to negotiate a peace where a new leader probably would. Of course, with a negotiated peace, we may have then had a WWIII... but you said nothing about creating the seeds of a new war when I ended this one faster.

[steveegg]

The problem with focusing on Hitler is that would leave Stalin free to march to Paris. In fact, "Command and Conquer: Red Alert" addressed just that.

I'd do a world tour to take out Hitler, Tojo and Stalin.

[capper]

I would shorten World War II by calling it WWII.

[Jason]

Whack Roosevelt. Sure, the Axis would win, but the war would be a lot shorter.

[Mister Jimmy]

I would have tried to make contact with Huey Long and advise him to get some 'real' trained bodyguards around him to prevent his assassination. I would have advised him of the possibilities offered by television, which existed then. Had his "Every Man a King" message spread around the world, possibly WWII could have been, if not averted, at least downsized or kept between Hitler and Stalin.

[TooMuchTime]

Not as interesting as it is tough.

20 grand is a lot of bux in 1935 but they still had operating asylums. You can't just use the money to start advocating the removal of Hitler/Stalin/Mussolini. Don't forget that many people in FDRs administration were envious of, and outright supported, those three socialists. Read Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. So, you really can't use the money to "raise awareness."

The problem with killing the socialist world leaders is that it really does no good. Who would take over in Germany? Hess? Goering? Neither of those is acceptable. In the case of Hirohito, you'll just put even more rabid militarists in power. Read Japan's War by Edwin Hoyt. You'd have to kill the entire officer corps in the Japanese Army. Killing Stalin would do no better.

Remember, you're talking about socialist dictatorships or militarist regimes. They have very active propaganda arms. You'd just make a martyr out of the leader and allow someone worse to take over. Killing national leaders looks great in hindsight until you scrutinize the idea.

Actually, the correct person to kill is probably Chamberlain. He caved and let Hitler have everything he wanted. Hitler pulled a great coup. All of the British entourage were smokers; Hitler was not. He would not allow them to smoke during deliberations. After hours of not smoking, Chamberlain and his cronies were willing to pretty much give Hitler what he wanted just so they could go have a smoke.

All of this is really under the heading of how to stop the war, not shorten it. Personally, I think the war was going to happen. Once a country (Germany, Japan, Italy) starts down that path, it was going to happen. Regardless of who's in charge.

[TooMuchTime]

How to shorten World War II...

The trick is to get your future enemy to fund the wrong technology while you fund the correct one. The winning technology here does not seem to be nuclear. With all of its money and resources, the US still took from 1942 to 1945 to build 3 atomic bombs. The Japanese were not concerned with the a-bombs and believed the US would have 1 or 2 more at the most. They were right. See Japan's War by Edwin Hoyt. And I don't believe that starting in 1935 was going to work. The US spent millions between 1942-45 and that was at a time when there was fear as to whether we'd win or lose. Try selling that to the isolationist US taxpayer in 1935. This doesn't mean I think the US stops nuclear research. I just believe that accelerating it would not have been possible.

The Polish and British (and probably the USSR) had already broken into the German Enigma system. We know that it DID shorten the war. So that's out, too.

I think the winning technology was jet engines and swept wings. If the US had had the F-86 Sabre in 1943 (that means fully tested and in a moderate number of operational groups) that would have shortened the war. How to get them? Buy Frank Whittle's jet engine and the German swept wing technology. With squadrons of P-80s and P-86s (they wouldn't be classed as "F" until later) we'd have had air superiority wherever we went. Navy aircraft carriers would have had Grumman F9F Panther and Cougar (swept wing) fighters as well. We'd probably have had the B-49 bombers as well. By the end of the war, with jet technology accelerated, the sound barrier would probably have been broken and supersonic fighters and bombers would be coming off the assembly lines.

As I said, the trick is to keep the technology for yourself and deny it to your enemy. I don't know if that's entirely possible, but it has to be done in some form for you to win.

Of course, it's just a thought exercise...

[EmmettMcFly55]

I'd take it in various steps.

1. I go to Germany and try to work myself into a high position. I am careful not to alter history in any way, though.

2. In late September, 1938, during the Sudetenland crisis, I hand "proof" to the Wehrmacht that Hitler is going to attack Czechoslovakia and risk war. They start a coup against him and Hitler and his goons are removed from power.

3. After ensuring that Germany transits to some sort of (probably limited) democracy, (perhaps after a limited German-Polish War over restoration of 1914 borders) I would go to Japan and convince Japan to ally with the Soviet Union against the western powers. Use my position here to tell Stalin that Germany, France, Britain and Italy want to bring him down. He'll attack in Europe and the Middle East and launch World War II against a united Europe.

4. Convince Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. There, the US, France, Britain, Italy and Germany are at war with the USSR and Japan.

5. Kill Mussolini, and hope that he is replaced by at least a moderate fascist regime.

6. Get sent back at the end of the war. I have prevented a larger scale WWII (this war would likely last shorter), I have removed the USSR, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany and there will be no ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe with Germans having to flee Silesia and Pommerania. That would be an improvement to OTL history, wouldn't it?