Maps from 1942 Imagine an Axis Invasion of the United States

By 1942 it was clear that the Germans did not have the wherewithal to invade Britain. Who on earth thought they could invade the USA? Unless, of course, it was just FUD to drum up support for the war.

JBSpesh I am sure it was clear to fewer then you might think because good information about what was happening is not as available as it is today. Of course just because there is good information about thing doesn't mean that people will draw the obvious, just think of how many people though Iraq has the ability to directly attack the US in either 1991 or 2002.

As you stated even suggesting that something like this is possible, no matter how unlikely, will get people to support the action to prevent it.

The most interesting thing to my eye is the 'fifth column' that's assumed to be lingering in the heartland.

Any invader of North America would face a logistical nightmare. They would be repulsed easily

Germany never possessed a world class surface navy, so I don't know how this would even be possible

^^the 5th column looks like they are stuck near the great lakes...and the heartland comes up the rear to deliver farm-raised havoc. Logistical nightmare worse than Germany ever had with Europe.

Glad to see that nonsense war propaganda and fear mongering hasn't changed through the decades.

Sorry to see that the American public is just as stupid and gullible as it ever was.

Imagine the beaches of the East Coast choked with hundreds of thousands of rifle-toting patriots just aching to scratch a Nazi. Would have made good film.

Cluck, after the battle of Britain Hitler called off his plans to invade Britain. Even so without that particular item of knowledge it's still pretty clear that an invasion of the US would be almost impossible.

The commitment of equipment and manpower to achieve such a thing would have been enormous and given that the Germans were already heavilly comitted on multiple other fronts it would have been clear to anybody in military intelligence that such an invasion was not going to happen.

I think you are over estimating the logical processing of the general public. The military obviously had little doubt that a direct attack on the US by Germany was extremly unlikely given that they build beach watch towers only around major port paths and having German POWs located in east coast towns.

I am just saying that the general public does not always take the logical path when fear is involved. I bet it would be very easy to find people that believe Russia could invade the US within a few months. Even easier if some major website posted "plans" of such a things even if it was a joke.

I think these ideas weren't so far fetched in view of that time. Some years earlier the strategists at the war department had research done and plans laid out for war scenario's with Canada in case the UK would lose a war in Europe. By 1942, talk in Nazi Germany was all about Things to Come in the 'You wait and see'-speeches of the Führer and his propaganda-machine. In 1942, the German U-boats were patrolling and sinking ships in sight of tha mainland of the US. So the threat of Germans at the footstep of the US was felt very real. And so while in the early 1940's one part of the strategists in the US was correctly calculating that the war would last only a few years more, others just had to count with the possibility that the Axis Forces had some hidden trumpcards up their sleeves to invade or at least attack the mainland of the US. And they all realised that those fears could be used to rally the public.

@Foreigner1

Heh, yeah. Nothing brings people together like a good dose of fear, no matter how irrational it might be.