The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

[phred]

Which wouldn't matter except that they're simultaneously dealing with the stupidly accurate and deadly (if small scale) attacks by regular US military forces on their front line. And with free-ranging airstrikes directed against their everything, since essentially everything the US Air Force has is immune to essentially everything the Wehrmacht has.

I would kinda be interested in seeing a ME-262 go up against an A-10, but other than that...

[The Vortex Empire]

Which wouldn't matter except that they're simultaneously dealing with the stupidly accurate and deadly (if small scale) attacks by regular US military forces on their front line. And with free-ranging airstrikes directed against their everything, since essentially everything the US Air Force has is immune to essentially everything the Wehrmacht has.

I would kinda be interested in seeing a ME-262 go up against an A-10, but other than that...

The A-10 has a modern radar and usually carries two AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, so that's not much of a fight.

[Lord Revan]

aren't Sidewinders heatseekers though, meaning they might not be that usefull against early jets, and borderline useless against proppeller planes.

[Darth Nostril]

They're still powered by internal combustion engines which give off heat.
Might make them harder to hit but they're still toast.

[Lord Revan]

They're still powered by internal combustion engines which give off heat.
Might make them harder to hit but they're still toast.

IIRC modern heatseekers have a threshold under which the missle won't lock on so that it won't lock into any random heat source (after all planes rarely are the only heatsource around that area).

that said I modern radar and modern jet engines give the A-10 an advantage.

[Purple]

They are however many times hotter than the ambient temperature. So even a propeller plane should be easy to shoot down.

[Borgholio]

Well for comparison, the Stinger missile is a heat-seeker and is specifically designed to track helicopters and low-flying aircraft that could very well be propeller-driven transports or recon planes. So I'd say that if a Stinger can do it, a Sidewinder could as well.

[Elheru Aran]

Ok, first off:

I concede that there is apparently less munitions in stock currently held by the US military than the sheer numbers of the German Wehrmacht. I'm not familiar with numbers like that (munitions info), and well, 12 million plus is a BIG number to take stock of.

It doesn't change the massive technological disparity. Our strikes can be far more targeted and precise than theirs. We can hit them day and night from any direction using infrared, laser, radar satellite and TV-guided targeting. They will really have no way of protecting their armaments other than surrounding them with hostages or deliberately placing them within areas with a heavy civilian population, which could well rankle their ethics.

Regarding resistance by police, there is little data to actually present as most department websites don't mention numbers. Here are a few that I was able to find:

APD: 2,000 officers
Henry County Police: 229 active, 14 reserve
Johns Creek Police: 62

Now bear in mind that there are at a minimum 146 cities and towns inside the metropolitan Atlanta region, from twenty counties, with a total of over five million people population. Where I live in McDonough, we have Henry County PD and HC Sheriff's Dept. A few miles down the road, we have the City of Griffin PD, City of Hampton PD, City of Stockbridge PD, City of Locust Grove PD. That's leaving out the public school police departments (yes, we have those).

This is pretty typical for most counties within the Metro Area-- you have individual city police departments, which tend to be fairly small (30-100? officers, depending on size of city/town), then county police departments, then other departments such as the sheriff's department. There are also a good number of colleges and universities inside the metropolitan area, all of which have their own campus security forces. There's a FBI office inside town and a Secret Service Treasury Department posting. Also state forces such as the Georgia State Patrol, Capitol Police and GBI, which admittedly will be spread out through the state to some degree but their headquarters are in Atlanta.

So 2500 cops in metro Atlanta? I don't think so. Closer to 3 or 4 thousand if you add them all up. Possibly as many as 5,000. Does that make them a barrier to the Wehrmacht? Not really, no. I never said they would stop the Germans or even win (seriously, wtf?). All I said is that they wouldn't just sit back and let the Germans roll over them.

Now if the Wehrmacht's general staff decides to play nice, send a few soldiers in unarmed with white flags and a carefully worded message... they could perhaps get the cops to surrender before picking a fight, on the basis of "we have waaaaaay more guns than you and if you decide to throw down things are gonna get messy, son". Facilitating a peaceful surrender of the city would be a quick way to keep civilian and police resistance down, as the sooner they can get, say, the Mayor on the air broadcasting "people, sit down, shut up and don't shoot the people in the grey uniforms," the sooner they can focus on reinforcing their position against the inevitable assault to come.

As I said earlier, the only way for them to really protect themselves from our ability to reach out and touch them from a long way away is to hide among the civilian population. A population that will be going "hey what just happened..." and coming to the realization that they are being occupied by a hostile force. Something that doesn't tend to sit well with anybody. And considering the numbers for gun ownership in the American South, and the amount of crazy we've got... well, the Germans probably won't be sitting easy after a while even if they manage to force a peaceful surrender.

So the ways it can go down:

--Germans occupy Atlanta. With or without resistance, it's a given they can take the city and metropolitan area. Nobody's disputing that. Long run (space of days? weeks?), they lose. It'd make a mess, though. Either way (resistance or not) lots of civilians are probably going to die from collateral damage if nothing else.

--Germans surrender more or less quickly once they realize the massive technological disparity. Not really in the parameters the OP set forth, IMO, as Zor explicitly said the Luftwaffe were on their way to bomb bases. Probably going to take a few tanks blown up at 4 km and a few well-placed bombs or missiles first, though.

--One scenario we didn't cover: the Wehrmacht decides to make its way overland. To where? Who knows. They could hole up in the Appalachians or the Smokies if they went up to Tennessee or the west Carolinas, although it's 101% certain that from a few hours, if not minutes, of their appearing the US would have eyes on them the whole time. Regardless, they are leaving the relative safety of Atlanta's civilian population and basically becoming a massive target-- even more liable to get hit by a tac-nuke or a few daisy-cutters. So if they decide to leave Atlanta, and if they know our capabilities, it's a fair guarantee they'd either surrender or go guerrilla. *That* could be a real pain in the arse to root out.

Thoughts on the Luftwaffe:

The German aircraft are largely useless in this scenario other than ground attack and some interdiction of the Atlanta area's airspace, and unless the Germans brought plenty of fuel along, that's going to become a crisis for them quickly until they secure the supply of gasoline. A quick Google shows that they used 87-octane gasoline at the start of the war; this can be procured from gas stations, tanker trucks, and such. There are certainly fuel depots around Atlanta that would be worth securing for their purposes. Jet fuel is probably useless to them, which is a shame as there's plenty of it around Hartsfield.

Air-to-air is a bust for them other than lucky shots; apart from the 262 and *maybe* the He 162, the Luftwaffe has no aircraft anywhere near as good as American combat aircraft. Even our bombers fly far faster than their fighters. All they have are cannon and unguided rockets for the most part. I can see them shooting down some drones, but the only thing they can really do, other than being targets for the USAF, is...

Air-to-ground: a far more viable role. While they don't have anywhere near as accurate munitions as the American forces, strafing, bombing and dive-bombing are still tactical options available. They can do some area denial in the form of bombing roads and bridges, attempt precision strikes against tank formations, try to blow up some trains, strafe soldiers, and so forth. They will lack real-time communications with forward troops (? not sure about this) but can still be useful tactically and strategically.

I cannot say that I am versed in US AA doctrine, but I believe it's largely missile-based nowadays. This may be an issue with low-speed propeller engined aircraft... if only for the reason that there are so fucking many of them the Army might actually run out of Stingers. If they had M163 vehicles with Miniguns still around, might be a good time to pull them out of mothballs but I doubt it. Would be a good time to quietly ask Russia for the loan of a few ZSU-23's.

Tanks and armoured vehicles? Tough targets for infantry, but can't really touch ours. Never mind that we've got anti-tank helicopters and aircraft, a category that didn't really exist in the 1940s and that the Germans won't really know how to counter. Their tanks will die, quickly.

Their infantry is using bolt-action rifles for the most part (unless you go with scenario 2, which gives them StG-44's). No body armour to speak of other than helmets. We've got plenty of body armour; our rifles tend to be lower caliber, but boy can we shoot a lot faster than them. Their only real advantage is numbers-- they've got a lot more soldiers than we do. In fact, they have so many that they might be able to take advantage of full-blown human-wave assaults to overpower initial attacks.

And that could be their biggest weakness, because you can damn well bet we aren't going to let their logistical forces supply them from outside their perimeter. So it could well turn into a siege. Twelve or thirteen million men, plus the approximately 5 and a half million citizens in the areas they control. I don't know how many food resources are stored within the Atlanta metro area, but without resupply I suspect it wouldn't take very long to expend it all.

[Lord Revan]

the thing is though that you don't have beat every single tank, plane or soldier of the Wehrmacht individually to defeat them as a whole and lets be honest even if our "grunt" wehrmacht soldier knew of modern weapons, it doesn't mean he'd be prepared to face them if unleashed against him. Even without things like nukes, even regular Cruise missles with conventional warheads would wreck havok on the german morale simply cause they had never faced anything like it.

[Mr Bean]

the thing is though that you don't have beat every single tank, plane or soldier of the Wehrmacht individually to defeat them as a whole and lets be honest even if our "grunt" wehrmacht soldier knew of modern weapons, it doesn't mean he'd be prepared to face them if unleashed against him. Even without things like nukes, even regular Cruise missles with conventional warheads would wreck havok on the german morale simply cause they had never faced anything like it.

This I disagree with, the Wehrmacht of Zor's contains twelve million German soldiers, everything from the early war veterans who have had to face down KV tanks that laughed off entire regiments of Axis defenses and late war soldiers who'd have to deal with continuous close in close air support in the form of Typhoon and Hurricane fighter bombers never mind late night attacks from high altitude attacks from strategic bombing. No the Wehrmacht soldiers won't cut and run from cruise missiles, there's nothing inherently scary about being blown up by a massive number of bombs as opposed to fewer more accurate bombs. The German tankers are already used to using ambush tatics and distract to get in close and side shot the bigger Soviet tanks, the fact it will be leagues harder to do anything aside from mission killing Abrams will simply mean more use of bunkering and concealment to get close.

Also "modern" weapons don't put out any more bullets than an SVT or Ppsh would, they are just more accurate and ubiquitous.

[bilateralrope]

Will the Wehrmacht be able to protect their leadership ?
Or will the US keep identifying and killing their leaders as soon as someone steps up to replace the last killed leader ?

How hard will it be to convince them that any orders that the modern German government sends them are genuinely coming from the German government ?
If convinced, will they obey the order to surrender ?

[Elheru Aran]

Will the Wehrmacht be able to protect their leadership ?
Or will the US keep identifying and killing their leaders as soon as someone steps up to replace the last killed leader ?

A very real probability as we have access to historical records. Our generals could put a call in to the proper department and within a few minutes have the full roster of German generals throughout WWII sitting before them, with photos and biographies. A few drones in the air later-- indeed, this is even more reason for them to order the Luftwaffe to shoot down all drones they see-- and they could very well be aware of the exact locations and movements of any general officers moving about in public. But if they're unaware of what the drones are doing, well, there's going to be a lot of Hellfires being shot off a la Afghanistan. Probably with a similar amount of civilian casualties, too.

What the leadership has to do, as soon as they take stock of their situation, is decide whether it's worth it to carry on fighting. Hitler and the Nazis are gone, and the Communist Russian threat is out of the picture. They're in the American heartland, sixty years behind the times. Man has been to the Moon and back. Do they really have any reason to fight?

No. So, unless they have some crazy OP-given motivation (secret orders from Hitler or whatever), the only thing they would really do is protect their troops and gather whatever intelligence they can, share information with each other, and then quickly tell the Americans that they're finished.

Shortly afterwards, the bottom drops out of the K98 Mauser war-surplus market and the ATF gets very busy turning a huge pile of tanks and guns into junk. The vintage-vehicles folks have a hell of a lot of fun driving mint Bf109's and half-tracks around. Twelve million ex-Wehrmacht soldiers become a massive influx of new immigrants, though I imagine they might be offered the opportunity to emigrate back to Germany...

[The Romulan Republic]

Wouldn't at least some of them face war crimes charges back in Germany? And what about Israel demanding extradition? Doubt they'd all want to go back.

[TimothyC]

Shortly afterwards, the bottom drops out of the K98 Mauser war-surplus market and the ATF gets very busy turning a huge pile of tanks and guns into junk.

If you are talking about the towed and self propelled weapons then I agree with you, but as I noted above, the Hughes Amendment will die a quick and time-travelly death, and production of civilian automatic weapons will be a thing again.

[RogueIce]

Wouldn't at least some of them face war crimes charges back in Germany? And what about Israel demanding extradition? Doubt they'd all want to go back.

Depends on how the time travel works and whether or not they had actually gotten up to any war crimes before they got poofed. Especially complicated since it's pretty much drawing across several years all at once.

And then whether or not anybody will care or even be able to prove any of that, or if they'll just roll with our historical records and assume they're guilty regardless.

[LaCroix]

Now there's a legal conundrum - would it be legal to put them on trial for things their non-travelling counterpart already stood trial and served time for? How can we punish two people for the same crime that only one person comitted?

[Thanas]

I have got to laugh at the idea of using drones to take out the military leadership. Germany already dealt with dedicated fighter-bomber attacks on their headquarters during the war. What, you think the allies never thought of bombing headquarters?

[Borgholio]

I have got to laugh at the idea of using drones to take out the military leadership. Germany already dealt with dedicated fighter-bomber attacks on their headquarters during the war. What, you think the allies never thought of bombing headquarters?

I think what they're referring to is the ability to pick off leadership with a drone strike, not a full bombing raid on the HQ. I bet the German Army would not be prepared for General Rommel to be hit with a hellfire missile the moment he stepped out of his bunker to inspect his armored divisions.

[Thanas]

I have got to laugh at the idea of using drones to take out the military leadership. Germany already dealt with dedicated fighter-bomber attacks on their headquarters during the war. What, you think the allies never thought of bombing headquarters?

I think what they're referring to is the ability to pick off leadership with a drone strike, not a full bombing raid on the HQ. I bet the German Army would not be prepared for General Rommel to be hit with a hellfire missile the moment he stepped out of his bunker to inspect his armored divisions.

So? That won't cripple the leadership. It will mainly make them tighten up the already existing protocols against threats to their generals. I mean, the German Generals were threatened on a regular basis by snipers, guerillas, fighter-bomber raids, enemy special forces raids....all this does is add another threat, but it is not something that cannot be avoided.

[Starglider]

aren't Sidewinders heatseekers though, meaning they might not be that usefull against early jets, and borderline useless against proppeller planes.

Early jets are all low-efficiency turbojets, which have much more waste heat per unit thrust than modern turbofans. As such IR guided missiles will be more useful, not less. I don't know about AIM-9 vs propellor aircraft specifically, but given the terrorist threat of light aircraft crashing into things I'm sure that the USAF has procedures for handling and has qualified its recent weapons against these targets. The major problems will be missle stocks and sortie rates; the US only has a few thousand AIM-9s on hand in the entire US.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Wouldn't at least some of them face war crimes charges back in Germany? And what about Israel demanding extradition? Doubt they'd all want to go back.

Depends on how the time travel works and whether or not they had actually gotten up to any war crimes before they got poofed. Especially complicated since it's pretty much drawing across several years all at once.

And then whether or not anybody will care or even be able to prove any of that, or if they'll just roll with our historical records and assume they're guilty regardless.

That's another thing - does this time travel pull soldiers from the latest point at which they served or the earlist, or somewhere in between? Take Rommel for instance, does it take him from 1942 (IIRC) when he's fighting in the desert or 1944 when he's in France?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

A Hellcat versus a Sidewinder. Hellcats are contemporary and comparable with anything in the German arsenal, so, well, do the math...

Tactical disparities aside, it's important to consider the operational disparity as well. We've talked about killing generals; why bother? The German communications are limited to physical couriers and relatively spotty and limited radio contact, with no actual hard infrastructure (radio towers, radar towers, etc), just mobile radios. Their operational awareness is limited to paper maps, mechanized recon (i.e., dudes with binoculars riding around in Sdkfz 250s), and in theory recon flights, but the latter will swiftly become impossible. In short, they have to rely on a purely theoretical knowledge of the terrain, region, and likely enemy concentrations (the maps), backed up with very spotty and unreliable radioed-in forward recce.

By contrast, not only do the Americans have the home turf advantage, but they've got satellite maps, vastly superior mechanized recce, helicopter recce (which, though vulnerable to German AAA, will be something the Germans aren't used to, and lightly armored helicopters are well-versed in avoiding confrontations with enemy AAA anyway), and recon drones. They've also got matured infra-red (German infra-red capabilities are in their mewling infancy as of late 1944, even assuming it's more plentiful in the #2 scenario) and radars up the wazoo.

In short, I'm not sure that the German numerical advantage means all that much. They're functionally blind at night or in bad weather, have only a theoretical grasp of their own position (i.e., maps), and in the time scale allotted before Complete Destruction Via USAF I'm not sure their command staff and communications are up to the task of organizing, deploying, and maneuvering millions of soldiers at once. Even if the Germans are able to win initial engagements with the Georgia National Guard on sheer shock and Zeitkrieg (teehee), marshaling a handful of sudden tactical victories into a viable strategic position over the next one or two days is unlikely, given the downright brutal pressure the US military will start applying. For every success OKW/OKH needs, they will pay for it by bleeding troops, munitions, and morale at an utterly unsustainable rate. Every engagement the Germans win will essentially be Pyrrhic.

[bilateralrope]

I have got to laugh at the idea of using drones to take out the military leadership. Germany already dealt with dedicated fighter-bomber attacks on their headquarters during the war. What, you think the allies never thought of bombing headquarters?

How well could their WWII HQ hold up against WWII bombs compared how well whatever buildings they use as their HQ in this scenario hold up against modern air to ground weaponry ?

There was no mention of them starting with an buildings. So they are going to have to set themselves up in existing buildings.

Though Gaius has a point. Taking out their leaders isn't important.

[Borgholio]

Well it was asked before, what are their plans? Do they just pop up and wonder what to do next, or did whatever entity that time traveled them give orders? Would these orders have been given to the entire army or just the leaders? If only the leaders know of such a plan, then killing them before they can implement it would be a good idea. If all the soldiers know what they should be doing from the beginning, then yeah it won't matter much.

[Gunhead]

You people do realize, if we assume something like an even dispersal of troops all across the state of Georgia and the germans having an idea where they're ending up, they in effect have control of the whole state from day 1. How do I know this? Really simple. 12000000 troops and their equipment take a fuckton of area to house, it would take the total available land area to do that. Even if they're pretty much bunched up, and I mean to the tune of 1 square meter per man, would already take something like 10% of available land area to pull off. Not to mention, they'd have enough troops to hold everyone in the state as a hostage at gunpoint.. and still have something like 2 million troops to do what ever with. This is not even taking into account all their vehicles, fuel, ammunition and all the other equipment.
But if their main objective is to take over Georgia and rename it the 4th Germaniareich and goose step all over Atlanta there's something between nothing and fuck all anyone can do to stop them.

The only and real question is how long and how they can hold onto it.

-Gunhead